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THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER AND 
OTHER PAPERS 

By ADRIAN HOFFMAN JOLINE 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

AND 
OTHER PAPERS 

BY 
ADRIAN HOFFMAN JOLINE 




PRIVATELY PRINTED 
ALDERBRINK PRESS CHICAGO 
MCMVII 



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The Alderbrink Press certifies that this 
edition of "The Autograph Hunter and Other 
Papers" consists of an edition of one hundred 
and fifty copies on hand-made paper. Printed 
for Mr. Adrian H. Joline in October MCM VII. 



Copyright 1907 Adrian H. Joline 



T 

'J| CONTENTS 

The Autograph Hunter. Revised and 

reprinted from The Independent, Page ii 

The Defection of Doctor Sprague. 
Revised and reprinted from The 
Collector Page 37 

Martin Van Buren, the Lawyer. Read 
before the New York State Bar 
Association, 1905 . . . Page 51 

The Society for the Promotion of the 
Public Good. Remarks before the 
Netherlands Society of Philadel- 
phia, January 23, 1906 . . Page 95 

George Payne Rainsf ord James . . Page 1 1 1 



NOTE. 

The title of this small volume is rather mis- 
leading, for it contains less about autographs 
than it does about Van Buren. But as these 
divarications are privately printed, nobody 
can very well complain. Only a few personal 
friends will ever read the papers, and they 
will probably utter no complaint. When the 
book is on the shelf, where it will undoubt- 
edly repose during most of its existence, the 
title it bears will look as well as any other. 

New York, November, 1906. 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

IN a recent number of the Independent a 
gentleman who describes himself as an 
"autographomaniac," and who manifestly 
possesses what Mr. Gilbert calls a pretty 
taste for paradox, has taken up the cudgels on 
behalf of the unpopular persons who "write 
for autographs/ and while he confesses that 
his pursuit is "shocking," he is brave enough 
to declare that he is "willing to take the con- 
sequences." I fully agree with him in his char- 
acterization of his nefarious habit, and am 
content to submit his case, as he makes it, to 
the tribunal of public opinion, without argu- 
ment on behalf of the respondent. He is 
welcome to the consequences, whatever they 
may be. I suspect that his screed is not to be 
taken very seriously, and that he is emulating 
De Quincy's treatise on Murder as a Fine Art. 
He has incited me, however, to utter a few 
more words about autographs, because he does 
me the honor to say "Such distinguished col- 
li 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

lectors as Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill and Mr. Adrian 
Joline turn up their noses at my kind/ and he 
makes some jocose but unworthy reflections 
upon my method of cultivating my hobby. He 
betrays himself as not a real collector, as only 
an amateur, who has not approached the shrine 
with proper reverence and preparation. Dr. 
Birkbeck Hill was in his lifetime a scholar and 
a clever literary man, devoted to the altar of 
Samuel Johnson, and he wrote a pleasant 
book called "Talks About Autographs," but he 
was not a collector in the ordinary acceptation 
of the term, and I am by no means a "distin- 
guished" collector, although I thank the Maniac 
for conferring upon me a title honorable but 
wholly undeserved. What amuses me most 
about the ravings of the Maniac is the asser- 
tion that collectors of my own way of thinking 
buy at auctions and through dealers "dry-as- 
dust letters written for the most part by men 
long since gone to their fathers," while the 
"pestilential nuisances," to borrow another 
Gilbertian phrase, confine their attention to 
autographs of the living, and especially prize 
the peppery responses they receive from per- 
secuted greatness. It reminds us of the ancient 
fable about the Oxford guide who exhibited 
to his party the eminent Jowett, the noted head 

12 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

of Balliol College, wrathful and indignant at 
the assault upon his study window, and of the 
individual whose favorite boast was that he 
had been soundly kicked by a Royal Duke. 
"Such and so various are the tastes of men." 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in his Ponkapog Pa- 
pers, speaks of "the average autograph hunter 
with his purposeless insistence"— "the innum- 
erable unknown who ^collect' autographs as 
they would postage stamps, with no interest in 
the matter beyond the desire to accumulate as 
many as possible." He tells of an instance 
where a fellow author was asked by a be- 
reaved widow and mother to copy for her 
some lines from his poem on the death of a 
child, to comfort her for the loss of her little 
girl. Two months later he found his manu- 
script with a neat price attached to it in a 
second-hand book shop. I am well pleased to 
be excluded from that class of autograph hunt- 
ers, and I do not envy the Maniac who cares 
to array himself in such an unworthy company. 

We occasionally buy the letters of the living, 
and some time ago the newspapers were quite 
stirred up by the sale of a letter from the Prince 
of Wales— now Edward VII. -to Mrs. Lang- 
try, for the respectable price of ninety dollars. 
Even the journals which make pretensions to 

13 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

decency and good taste broke forth in clamor, 
one of them sneering at the alleged value of 
collecting as a preservative of literary and his- 
torical treasures, and another announcing with 
oracular finality that the incident proved the 
"snobbishness" of collectors. All these deduc- 
tions based upon insufficient premises, are the 
offspring of imperfect intelligence, and the 
evidence of that tendency to hasty judgment 
which marks the utterances of the uninformed 
and unreflecting person. The chances are 
that the bidder was unconsciously competing, 
through an agent, with some rival who had 
given an order without a limit; or that the 
owner was making what is known in Wall 
street as a "washed sale" in order to establish 
a market price for a number of similar speci- 
mens of royal autography. I heard a rumor 
that a faithless maid of the famous actress stole 
a quantity of letters from her mistress, and that 
the vendee was endeavoring to "realize" on 
the ill-gotten booty. But whether these con- 
jectures are well founded or not, it is certainly 
quite easy to understand why a letter from so 
distinguished a personage to a noted beauty, 
an ornament of the stage, should possess an 
interest for a collector wholly apart from any 
element of snobbishness. 

14 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

Before me lies a faded pamphlet, a copy of 
"The Atheneum, or Spirit of the English Mag- 
azines," published in Boston, on January i, 
1828, containing articles unblushingly appro- 
priated from British periodicals in the days 
when our own periodicals were feeble, few 
and far between. Among them is one on 
"Autographs," beginning with these words: 
"In direct opposition to the established maxim, 
* A living dog is better than a dead lion,' the 
autograph of a dead man is better than that 
of a living one; indeed, the longer a man has 
been dead, the better the autograph." 

The genial Maniac—who is not as mad as 
he pretends to be-may whimsically dispute 
this proposition, but it is an eternal verity, far 
beyond the power of any of us to controvert 
successfully. As with the pictures of famous 
artists, the price increases when the source of 
supply is cut off, and the value is measured by 
the price. 

I am glad to have my friend draw upon him- 
self the lightning of great men's wrath, because 
some day the thunderers will be dead, and his 
specimens, heroically gathered in defiance of 
their indignant bolts, will be lovingly cherished 
by disciples of the cult whose coat-tails are im- 
mune to the kicks of enraged statesmen and 

15 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

authors. It is true, nevertheless, that mere "au- 
tographs by request" are of little value in the 
eyes of a wise collector; even when they have 
the spice of bitter resentment they are by no 
means precious. 

In a curiously unappreciative paper concern- 
ing the beloved Autocrat, Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, included by Andrew Lang in his "Ad- 
ventures Among Books," Mr. Lang says of the 
delectable Doctor: "He was even too good- 
humored, and the worst thing I have ever 
heard of him is that he could never say *no' to 
an autograph hunter." Surely Lang intended 
this accusation to be a gentle commendation, 
but I fear that the casual reader will fail to de- 
tect the subtle humor of it. Treating it seri- 
ously, for the casual reader's sake, I own my 
inability to find in the amiable weakness any 
good reason for criticism or for censure. I ad- 
mit that if these pests of great men had made 
demands upon the Doctor's purse they would 
have been seeking only trash, according to the 
dictum of the author of Othello^whoever 
that author may have been-and that by re- 
questing his autograph they were endeavoring 
to take from him his good name, but only as 
inscribed upon a sheet of innocent paper and 
by no means making him "poor indeed." I am 

i6 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

convinced that the sneers and cavils of those 
who pronounce harsh judgments upon the 
seekers of autographs are only the manifesta- 
tions of ignorant illiberality like the old com- 
plaints which are uttered from time to time 
about'uncut" books, deckel edges, first editions, 
and dainty bindings. These denunciations re- 
semble the outcries of those who possess not 
the fragrant automobile against the plutocrat 
who monopolizes our highways, drives us from 
our paths with imperious tootings, frightens 
our humble horses, and occasionally downs 
us in the dust. When we are not of his class, 
we scold him bitterly, but if we come to that 
state of affluence which enables us to join his 
ranks, we quickly assume his autocratic de- 
meanor towards those who merely cumber the 
earth with their slow-moving vehicles, horse- 
drawn, crawling along without benefit of gas- 
oline or of electricity. Probably the Merovin- 
gian kings with their ox-chariots were fiercely 
hostile to the swift pacer or trotter. "It all de- 
pends" as they say in the Mikado. I do not 
love the automobile; it is typical of a certain 
vulgarity of the rich. If I needed rapidity of 
motion, I would prefer to travel in the cab of 
an engine on the Twentieth Century Limited. 
I do not dote upon polo or bridge, but I keep 

17 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

silent about them because I know that my 
neighbor's tastes may lawfully be indulged 
whatever I may think about them and whether 
or not they accord with mine. As the pleasant 
writer of The Upton Letters remarks, "It does 
not matter how much people disagree, if they 
will only admit in their minds that every one 
has a right to a point of view, and that their 
own does not necessarily rule out all others." 
I am disposed to love my neighbor as myself, 
as good people are instructed to do, but the 
task is often arduous. I ask only that he will 
patiently indulge me in my fondness for my 
favorite books and my pet autographs, which 
cannot possibly interfere with his personal 
comfort as his automobile does with mine 

Almost every one who reads and who really 
thinks has a pleasure in looking at autographs. 
In the great library of the Vatican I have ob- 
served the eager interest with which the visi- 
tors gaze upon the handwriting of Henry VIIL, 
of Anne Boleyn, and of Martin Luther, the 
latter being oddly preserved in a place where 
one would scarcely expect to find it. The 
throngs who contemplate the wonderful col- 
lection in the British Museum testify to the 
fascination which clings to the actual pen- 
tracings made bv men and women of historic 

i8 



THE AU TOGRAPH HUNTER 

fame, and the multitudes who visit the Library 
of Congress in Washington linger over the 
glass-covered cabinets where the letters of our 
Presidents, as well as of many other noted 
public men, grouped with their portraits, are 
admirably arranged for inspection by the 
curious. 

The interest of many examples in collec- 
tions is purely autographic-that is to say, the 
simple fact that the lines were inscribed by the 
particular person is the chief stimulant of the 
beholder's imagination. It may be merely a 
formal document to which only the signature 
of Queen Elizabeth, or of Napoleon, or of 
Charles I. of England, or of Washington is af- 
fixed; it may be nothing but a line or two 
penned by Samuel Johnson, or by Dean Swift, 
by WiUiam Pitt, or by Cardinal RicheHeU'-the 
effect is produced, and no one who has a 
spark of fancy can fail to gain some pleasure 
from the contemplation, for example, of an 
official paper bearing the names of Charles II. 
and Samuel Pepys, or a parchment scroll sub- 
scribed by Oliver Cromwell. It is a simple 
matter to advance from this point to the de- 
light of reading original letters and manu- 
scripts of intrinsic merit, and with the charm 
of reading comes the joy of possession. It is 

19 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

a joy whose nature is absolutely different from 
that which a bibliophile experiences when he 
gloats over his precious "first edition," or hugs 
to his bosom his invaluable Caxton. Some- 
times there may be a sense of pride in the 
ownership of a thing which no one else can 
own, and we may detect the note of triumph 
sounded in the boast occasionally uttered by 
even the most modest of my class—'^No speci- 
men, sir, in the British Museum!" But the real 
delight is in the feeling of companionship with 
the man who wrote the letter or the book. 
The true autograph hunter may live with 
Lamb, talk with Macaulay, listen to Dr. John- 
son, gaze upon Thackeray at the Garrick, and 
stand in the presence of Pope and Dryden. If 
these are the results of devotion to "musty- 
dusty stuff," then let my amiable lunatic of 
Madison, Wisconsin, in the immortal words of 
Patrick Henry, "make the most of it." 

It is strange that the autograph collector is 
scorned and despised by the majority. Perhaps 
it is because most men do not reflect about that 
which is of no immediate interest to them. It 
may be that it comes from the resentment 
which the many are apt to feel towards the 
few who are devoted to some rather exclusive 
pursuit; for the concrete autograph itself usu- 

20 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

ally arouses the attention of any intelligent per- 
son. I have an idea that the depreciation 
comes from a certain affectation on the part 
of great men, and the shallow acquiescence of 
the careless newspaper scribblers in what they 
deem to be the popular judgment. Like the 
early Christians, we survive our persecutions. 
We know that unpopularity is a poor test of 
merit. It would be a sad day if collecting should 
ever become popular, as golfing is and as "bi- 
cycling" was. I have a keen sympathy with the 
English schoolmaster who said that golf and 
drink were the two curses of the country. 

No less famous a man than Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne has recorded his views about auto- 
graphs. When he had before him a book 
containing letters of statesmen and soldiers of 
the Revolution, he put himself in the class of 
autograph lovers. I cite his very words, be- 
cause, much to my astonishment, I find that he 
expresses my own feelings much more elo- 
quently than I am able to do. "They are profit- 
able reading in a quiet afternoon," he said, 
"and in a mode withdrawn from too intimate 
relation with the present time; so that we can 
glide backward some three-quarters of a cen- 
tury, and surround ourselves with the ominous 
sublimity of circumstances that then frowned 

21 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

upon the writers. * * * They are magic 
scrolls, if read in the right spirit. The roll of 
the drum and the fanfare of the trumpet is 
latent in some of them; and in others, an echo 
of the oratory that resounded in the old halls 
of the Continental Congress, at Philadelphia; 
or the words may come to us as with the 
living utterance of one of those illustrious 
men, speaking face to face, in friendly com- 
munion. Strange, that the mere identity of 
paper and ink should be so powerful. The 
same thoughts might look cold and ineffectual 
in a printed book. Human nature craves a 
certain materialism, and clings pertinaciously 
to what is tangible, as if that were of more im- 
portance than the spirit accidentally involved 
in it. And, in truth, the original manuscript 
has always something which print itself must 
inevitably lose. An erasure, even a blot, a 
casual irregularity of hand, and all such little 
imperfections of mechanical execution, bring 
us close to the writer, and perhaps convey 
some of those subtle intimations for which 
language has no shape. * * * * There 
are said to be temperaments endowed with 
sympathies so exquisite that, by merely hand- 
ling an autograph, they can detect the writer's 
character with unerring accuracy, and read his 

22 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

inmost heart as easily as a less gifted eye 
would peruse the written page. Our faith in 
this power, be it a spiritual one, or only a 
refinement of the physical nature, is not un- 
limited, in spite of evidence. God has im- 
parted to the human soul a marvellous strength 
in guarding its secrets, and he keeps at least 
the deepest and most inward record for his 
own perusal. But if there be such sympathies 
as we have alluded to, in how many instances 
would History be put to the blush by a volume 
of autograph letters, like this which we now 
closer ^ 

Even "m a sedate student of history, a new 
emotion may be produced by the actual and 
visible presence of such a letter as this, from 
Charles II., which speaks to me of a kindly 
heart, whatever we may think of the morals 
of England's Merry Monarch. 

As Mr. Choate said recently in a notable 
public address, "he was a jovial blade," and I 
am glad to add, for it echoes my sentiments, 
our eloquent ex- Ambassador remarked that 
"James II. was the limit." 



1 A Book of Autographs: Hawthorne's Works, Ed. 1889, 
Vol. XII., 88. 

23 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

"Whitehall lo Jan., 1684. 

Harry Sidney. I would have you assure 
Temple that I am very kinde to him, and if he 
can compasse the match he designes at Paris, 
I will use my best offices with the king of 
France to make it in all points as easy to him 
as I can. Charles R." 

I trust that no disrespect is implied in spell- 
ing the word "king" with a small "K." 

Coming to a much later day, it is surely of 
interest to read what George Bancroft thought 
of President Andrew Johnson, particularly in 
view of the recent discovery, from the John- 
son papers in the Congressional Library, that 
the first message of that much-abused presi- 
dent, a state paper much admired and won- 
dered at when it appeared, was drafted by 
America's most distinguished historian. He 
is writing to Adam Badeau. " I knew Andrew 
Johnson thoroughly well," he says, "having 
once lived near him where I saw him every 
day and had the most unreserved intercourse 
with him. I then held and now hold that his 
arraignment was an act of injustice, and that 
he was on his trial thoroughly entitled to ac- 
quittal. The man had faults enough, ambition 
enough; but his unvaried intention was, to 
maintain fidelity to the Constitution and keep 

24 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

within its bounds." Mr. Bancroft differed on 
this subject from that marplot, Edwin M. 
Stanton, who conspired with Buchanan, abused 
Lincoln, vilified and ruined M'Clellan, at- 
tempted to destroy Johnson, and perished mis- 
erably, to be handed down to inconsiderate 
posterity by partisan writers as our "Great War 
Secretary." 

If we look upon Bancroft on that literary 
side which was, after all, the most attractive 
side of his character, we cannot fail to be 
brought closer to him when we have before 
us, in his own distinct and very literary hand- 
writing, what he wrote to Bayard Taylor in 
1864. "Mr. Lang has just left with me your 
chant for Bryant's 70th birthday. It is admir- 
able. I expected good from you; and you 
have done exceedingly well. You need never 
regret that you made this most successful effort. 
* * * You are too modest. Your parts are 
never of the past." I am sorry to say that Mr. 
Bancroft then proceeds to suggest amendments 
of Taylor's verses, which I will not quote. 
The "Mr. Lang" mentioned in the letter is not 
Andrew the All-knowing, but Louis Lang, an 
artist of New York, who composed the music 
for Taylor's ode, which was sung at the "Cen- 
tury"on the night of November 5th, 18 64, when 

25 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

-Bancroft presiding and Emerson, Holmes 
and a host of others assembled--that Associa- 
tion commemorated the arrival of the beloved 
poet at the age of three score and ten. 

The innate modesty of Hawthorne shines 
out in this brief letter, which he wrote from 
Lenox in December, 1850, after he had given 
to the world "The Scarlet Letter," and had 
ceased to be what he once styled himself, 
"the obscurest man of letters in America." 
I do not know the name of the person to whom 
it was written: but that is of no moment. He 
writes: "I am gratified that you think me 
worth biographizing; and as soon as I get a 
book off my hands, I will see what I can do 
towards your purpose. You will not find it a 
life of many incidents. I could wish (not for 
the first time) that I were personally known to 
you, and could impart the requisite materials 
from one corner of the fireside to the other." 
That this expression was sincere, there can be 
no question; it does not bear out the idea that 
Hawthorne was an unsocial person, shunning 
his fellow-beings. But I must not indulge too 
freely in my fondness for my own treasures. 

Sometimes the satisfaction in the possession 
of "something which no one else can own," is 
seriously lessened by the discovery that some 

26 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

one else has a prize which he fondly believes 
to be the very thing which I cherish so lov- 
ingly. I have had at least three severe shocks 
but I have survived them. My letter of Oliver 
Wendell Holmes to Parsons, the translator of 
the "Inferno," dated in 1867* was printed in 
the "Century" for October, 1901, in an article 
by Maria S. Porter, with a few verbal changes 
of no moment but dated "1869," and the 
writer asserted that she was "the fortunate 
possessor of it." In my anxiety, I wrote to her 
at the address given to me by the publishers 
of the magazine, and told her courteously of 
my predicament. I received no reply, and as 
my letter was not returned to me I inferred 
that possibly the lady had once owned the 
Holmes letter but had parted with it before 
her article appeared. Years ago I purchased 
what was called the manuscript of Moore's 
"Epicurean," covering one hundred and forty- 
seven pages of the two hundred and eleven 
comprised in the edition of 1839. 

Within a short time I saw in the catalogue 
of the sale of Le Gallienne's autographs, an 
announcement of "The Manuscript of Thomas 
Moore's Epicurean." Later it was sold in 
Bishop Hurst's collection, and the purchaser 
kindly allowed me to examine it. Mr. Bow- 

27 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

den, associated with George H. Richmond, is 
always considerate and I thank him for his 
courtesy. His manuscript is what he calls it 
—"original manuscript of the original draft;" 
contained in a blank book, a preliminary 
sketch, and valuable enough, while mine is 
manifestly the copy sent to the printer. 

I have what I am quite sure is the manu- 
script of Barry Cornwall's "Life of Charles 
Lamb," a thick volume whose sheets seem, like 
my Moore's pages, to be those which the 
compositors handled. But when the aforesaid 
collection of the worthy Bishop was disposed 
of at auction, there was another "Manuscript 
of Barry Cornwall's Life of Charles Lamb" 
offered to a confiding public. I have seen 
this also, and while it is bound in a style quite 
similar to mine, it is much smaller and ap- 
pears to be only a rough draft of a portion of 
the book. The Bishop and I seem to have 
been enamored of drafts. These fables teach 
us not to be unduly puffed up about our 
"author's manuscripts;" there may be several 
of the same work, for great books are not 
thrown off at a single sitting. 

An English dealer once pointed out to me, 
by way of temptation to a patriotic American, 
the alleged manuscript of "My Country, 'Tis 

28 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

of Thee/ and was quite depressed in spirit 
when I told him that good old Doctor Smith 
spent a large part of his declining years in 
producing autograph copies of his one famous 
poem; and Holmes, in his generous way, did 
not disdain to turn out copies of "Old Iron- 
sides" and "The Last Leaf— precious things, 
even if not the originals. 

The number of genuine collectors in the 
United States is not large, but it is increasing. 
To those of us whose appetite has not yet 
been satiated, it is discouraging to observe the 
rise in the prices of desirable autographs. The 
Atheneum article from which I have already 
quoted, refers to contemporaneous auction 
values, and speaks of Cromwell at five guineas, 
Francis I. at four shillings, Sir Francis Wal- 
singham with five added signatures at nine 
shillings. Lord Nelson at two pounds fifteen 
shillings, and Gibbon at eight shillings. 

Before me is a manuscript catalogue of a 
leading London house in which Cromwell 
figures at eighteen pounds twelve shillings, 
Francis I. at ten pounds, Walsingham at thirty- 
five pounds, and Gibbon at two pounds fif- 
teen shillings. At a sale in London in May, 
1904, a letter of Nelson to Lady Hamilton 
brought one thousand and thirty pounds—it 

29 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

seems an absurd price. The "Evening Post" 
bibliophile intimates that it is likely that "two 
agents at the sale had unlimited bids from 
long-pursed buyers, and each determined to 
outbid the other, and both lost their heads." 
I am pleased to find one of my theories about 
these tremendous prices sustained by such a 
competent authority. There are other reasons 
for the differences in sale values. The im- 
portance of the contents of letter or docu- 
ment, the sudden increase in the fame of the 
writer, and the anxiety of some enthusiast 
to obtain the one specimen needed to com- 
plete a "set," are all factors. Ten years ago 
the eighteen Hnes which now confront me in 
the rather boyish scrawl of Theodore Roose- 
velt might have been found in the "seventy- 
five cent list," but it cost me ten doUars-a 
fact which illustrates the truth of the adage 
concerning the unwise person and his supply 
of coin, more forcible than polite. It sug- 
gests the idea that the problem of what to do 
with our ex-Presidents is more easily solved 
than we had supposed. Ten autograph letters 
a day at ten dollars each would afford a re- 
spectable income, although there would be 
danger of overstocking the market; but Con- 
gress might establish a fixed price, deriving its 

30 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

power in that regard from the interstate com- 
merce clause of the Constitution. 

Bearing in mind the record contained in the 
Atheneum, it is not unlikely that the man who 
bought wisely in 1828 might have left a legacy 
to his descendants far more valuable than city 
lots in upper New York, which have en- 
riched so many members of our modern auto- 
mobilistic aristocracy. Regarded as an invest- 
ment, I am inclined to believe that a well- 
selected collection of autograph letters may 
be, in the long run, superior to Chicago street 
railway stocks or Ship-Building bonds. It is 
true that autographs pay no dividends; but we 
know that, and we never know whether we 
are to get our income from what we are 
pleased to call our "securities." There is great 
satisfaction in being certain about something. 
I know that there has been offered to me for 
a dozen Revolutionary War letters, signed by 
Washington, double the amount I paid for 
them a few years ago, and I cannot say as 
much for any of the beautifully engraved cer- 
tificates or evidences of indebtedness of "rail- 
ways" or "industrials." I suppose the name 
"industrials" was adopted because of the en- 
ergy with which the promoters "worked" the 
community. The real collector, however, has 

31 



THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

small regard for the sordid side of the occu- 
pation. I would not part with my Washing- 
tons for many times their cost, but I like to 
think that somebody covets them. 

When the Maniac charges me with turning 
up my nose at his kind, he is mistaken. I am 
not what Miss Squeers called "a turned-up- 
nose peacock,"— far from it. Dickens remarked 
that a peacock with a turned-up nose is a 
novelty in ornithology and a thing not com- 
monly seen. A collector of autographs who 
turns up his nose at any other collector is just 
as much of a novelty. The collector who de- 
serves the name is comprehensive in his affec- 
tions; nothing collectorial is alien to him. He 
would indeed be an offensive creature who 
would scorn the feeblest efforts of an aspirant, 
the incipient struggles of a neophyte whose 
untutored mind is striving to attain the ulti- 
mate goal of ambition. I remember that in my 
salad days I deliberately destroyed a large 
number of interesting letters of pubhc men in 
order to save only the signatures, and yet I 
escaped an indictment for malicious mischief. 
We must all have our beginnings; we must 
pass through the trying ordeals of infancy, of 
boyhood, and of young manhood. There are 
many stages of the malady which Edmund 

32 



TFJE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER 

Gosse calls "collectaneomania." 

A veteran collector would no more dream 
of distorting his nasal organ in the presence of 
youthful ignorance than Grant or Lee would 
have thought of sneering at a cadet, or Choate 
or Carter would have despised a recent grad- 
uate of Chase's Law School, or a Bachelor of 
Laws just out of Cambridge or Columbia. It 
is delightful to observe the protoplasmic germ 
of a collector. No one can tell what may 
come of it. It may develop into greatness. 



33 



THE DEFECTION OF 
DOCTOR SPRAGUE 



THE DEFECTION OF DOCTOR 
SPRAGUE 

MANY disparaging remarks have been 
made about collectors of autographs 
by men of varying degrees of intel- 
ligence. For some reason, but I have 
never been able to discover exactly what it is, 
the plain persons, and even some who con- 
sider themselves much superior to plain per- 
sons, are filled with unholy glee whenever 
they find an opportunity to utter expressions 
of scorn and contempt concerning those of 
their fellow beings who gather autographs 
and treasure the written words of the famous. 
These expressions are in most cases coupled 
with sarcastic allusions to postage stamps, and 
every man appears to believe that the idea of 
associating a stamp collector and an autograph 
collector is entirely original with him. I have 
amused myself at divers times by recounting 
some of these censorious observations and in 
endeavoring to fathom the mystery of their 
genesis, while venturing mildly to demonstrate 
their injustice. I confess that the latest ex- 

37 



THE DEFECTION OF 

ample which has been brought to my atten- 
tion has given me more pain and surprise than 
any of its predecessors. We have been as- 
sailed and vilified in the house of our friends, 
and if one may be permitted to use a trite ex- 
pression, attributed to a personage whose au- 
tograph would adorn even the British Mu- 
seum, one may well cry out, "£f tu Brute/ " 

No collector deserving the name is unaware 
of the proud eminence which has always 
been awarded to the Reverend William Buel 
Sprague, D. D., the grandfather of us all, who 
from his Albanian eyrie dispensed autograph 
letters throughout the land, and with delight- 
ful liberality shared his stores with his breth- 
ren of the cult, while reserving for his own a 
splendid mass of rare Americana. The en- 
thusiastic Draper says of him that he "fills a 
distinguished and unique place in the history 
of American literature and is accorded on 
all hands the highest rank among the early 
American autograph collectors." Was he not 
the man who furnished to Doctor Emmet the 
peerless Lynch letter, the envy of all collec- 
tors, now buried in the New York Public 
Library? I hear rumors of another letter, said 
to belong to Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, but I have 
my doubts. From the description of it given to 

38 



DOCTOR SPRAGUE 

me, I think it must be the one which is print- 
ed in Draper's "Autographic Collections" and 
is shown to be a forgery. I had acquired a 
reverence for the worthy Doctor equal to that 
with which the devotee of Christian Science 
regards Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, or to that 
which we are assured on unimpeachable au- 
thority, the heathen exhibits when he bows 
down to wood and stone. But within a few 
days past a kind Bostonian, actuated by gen- 
erous impulse, although perhaps not wholly 
lacking in sarcastic humor, gave me a book 
called "Visits to European Celebrities, by Wil- 
liam B. Sprague, D. D.," from the library of 
Governor Charles H. Bell, of New Hampshire, 
which contains an original autograph letter 
of the excellent dominie, written undoubted- 
ly to Bell himself. The astonishing tenor of 
this letter leads me to present it in all its hid- 
eousness: 

"Albany, i8 April, '68. 
"My dear sir: Your kind letter has set me to 
looking through a part of my collection to see 
if I could find duplicates of any of your names 
on your list, and the result, as you will see, is a 
very meagre contribution. Such as they are, 
however, you are entirely welcome to them. 
As a friend, I would advise you to have as lit- 

39 



THE DEFECTION OF 

tie to do with an autograph collector as possi- 
ble, for though there are some honorable ex- 
ceptions, yet, as a class, I think they rank A 
No. I in point of meanness. 

"Very truly yours, 

W. B. Sprague" 
I acknowledge that on the first perusal of 
this remarkable epistle I was stricken with the 
sort of stupor which used to overcome the 
Virgilian hero when he succumbed to circum- 
stances and *^vox faucibus hasitJ' After hav- 
ing battled with all the indictments found by 
the grand jury of the public, the charges of 
covetousness, selfishness, impudence, silliness, 
uselessness, born of the plenitude of popular 
misinformation, and after what I had vainly 
deemed my triumphant pleas to those indict- 
ments, sustained, as I fondly imagined, by the 
courts of highest jurisdiction—to be confronted 
now with an accusation based upon the shame- 
less confession of a co-conspirator, the shock- 
ing admissions of a particeps criminis^ the 
State's evidence of a faithless associate, made 
my heart fail me for a moment, and my soul to 
grow sad as I said, "but it was even thou, my 
companion, my guide, and mine own familiar 
friend!" Figuratively, Doctor Sprague was all 
of that to me, although I must own that his birth 

40 



DOCTOR SPRAGUE 

antedates mine a little over half a century, and I 
never had the good fortune to enjoy his actual 
personal acquaintance. It would not have 
astonished me more had Doctor Emmet de- 
nounced the Signers, Danforth or Greenough 
sneered at Continental Congressmen, or any 
member of the tribe of Benjamin proclaimed 
the folly of buying autographs in the market. 
I could more easily have believed that Dodd 
could be divorced from Mead, Houghton from 
Mifflin, Kuhn from Loeb,or Arnold from Con- 
stable. If Mr. Hearst and his gentle and refined 
newspapers had suddenly nominated Rocke- 
feller for the Presidency, or if the New York 
Tribune had blazed out in condemnation of 
protective tariffs, they would not have given 
me as serious a shock as did this utterance of the 
venerable Sprague. But there lies the record, 
and with an effort I summon what remains of 
my intellect in order to apply myself to a calm 
consideration of this unexpected situation. 

We are at a disadvantage^ at the outset, be- 
cause the evidence upon which the charge is 
based has not been submitted to our scrutiny. 
A good deal of the merit of a cause depends 
upon the proofs which are presented in its 
support. It is not difficult to formulate a 
complaint, but it is sometimes hard to bring 

41 



THE DEFECTION OF 

the witnesses up to the necessities of the case. 
I once had a client who would come into the 
office just before the trial of his action and, 
rubbing his hands in a genial way, cry out 
"Well, what do you want us to swear to?" But 
he was an exception, for they generally ex- 
hibit a strong disinclination to testify to the 
point and make strenuous efforts to evade it. 
It would have been a pleasure to question the 
frank and honest Doctor, but unfortunately 
he is beyond the reach of cross-examination. 
What tales he might have unfoldedl Alas, 
they are buried with him. We may only analyze 
the accusation and endeavor to determine its 
justice or its injustice by methods which are 
not permitted by the rules of evidence. 

Meanness means the mean. The mean is the 
low-minded, base, wanting in integrity, poor, 
pitiful, stingy. Meanness is a low state, poor- 
ness, want of dignity or excellence, want of 
liberality. I must be right about this, for I am 
quoting from a standard dictionary. On behalf 
of the fraternity of autograph collectors, and 
without a fee— unprofessional as it may seem— 
I enter a plea of "not guilty." When Doctor 
Sprague penned those fatal lines, he was suf- 
fering no doubt from some experience of a 
painful nature with a pseudo-collector, a mere 

42 



DOCTOR SPRAGUE 

Jeremy Diddler of a collector, who being 
aware of the dominie's sweet simplicity of 
character and willingness to help the aspiring 
neophyte, had attempted to impose upon him 
for purposes of sordid gain. 

One great difficulty which a reasonable man 
encounters in the course of his life'- and I 
consider myself the only truly reasonable man 
of my acquaintance «- is the unfortunate ten- 
dency of other men to indulge in generali- 
zations. Almost all generalizations are dan- 
gerous, fallacious, and fraught with violations 
of the rules of logic. Journeying in Canada 
some years ago in the society of an eminent 
author of our day, we met a lad who suffered 
from a bad cough, and some hours later we 
came upon another boy who was laboring 
under a similar affliction. My literary friend 
thereupon delivered himself of this solemn 
judgment: "All small boys in Canada have 
coughs." We are familiar with the story of 
the Englishman visiting Germany for the first 
time, and after a single hour's experience in 
a railway carriage, noted in his diary: "All 
Germans have red hair and are named Muller." 
The Psalmist said in his haste that all men are 
liars. I can not help thinking that Doctor 
Sprague said what he did about collectors in 

43 



THE DEFECTION OF 

like haste and with less justification, because 
all men, except George Washington and Mark 
Twain, have lied at times, whereas I am con- 
fident that collectors, as a rule, are not mean 
and that the mean ones are the dishonorable 
exceptions. 

But although I hold a brief for the defence, I 
intend to be fair. I am informed that no less a 
person than Doctor Thomas Addis Emmet him- 
self— c/ar«w et venerabile nomen^ asserts that 
Sprague was well within the truth when he 
stigmatized collectors in the manner set forth 
in the Bell letter; that he was victimized right 
and left by people who never compensated 
him for material that he sold to them, and 
that he declared that Emmet and the late T. 
Bailey Myers were the only customers who 
paid him. 

It must be remembered, however, that Doc^ 
tor Sprague was not a dealer, a business man, 
with a tangible shop with a real, perceptible 
price-list. Perhaps the recipients of his auto- 
graphic contributions thought that they were 
donees and not vendees. Diffident persons, 
strangers, might well hesitate about offering 
filthy lucre to a learned Doctor of Divinity, 
unless he does as merchants do and gives notice 
that he is in trade, by judicious advertisement. 

44 



DOCTOR SPRAGUE 

I doubt whether he mentioned prices or sent 
a bill, but if he expected payment he should 
have resorted to the ordinary methods of 
business. 

Assuming that Doctor Sprague has testified 
that Emmet and Myers were the only persons 
who constitute the "honorable exceptions" re^ 
ferred to in the Bell letter, let us subject the 
complainant to such cross-examination as un- 
der our severe difficulties, we may resort to 
in aid of our clients. Doctor, did you ever 
know one Israel W. Tef f t, of Georgia? Is it 
not a fact that when you visited him in 1830 
he had only about thirty letters of Signers, but 
that he offered to give you such as you need- 
ed'-and you took them? Did he not in 1845 
present to you one or more Lynch signatures 
to enable you to complete your additional sets? 
If the Doctor's devoted admirer, Lyman C. 
Draper is telling the truth, the answers must 
be "yes." Now, I show you a letter in your 
unmistakable chirography, dated at Flushing, 
October 16, 1874, ^^^ call your attention to 
this language: "When I began to collect auto- 
graphs, I was the intimate friend and corres^ 
pondent of Robert Gilmour of your city, the 
first collector 1 ever knew, but it is long since 
his collection was sold and I suppose scattered 

45 



THE DEFECTION OF 

to the winds." I will ask you now whether 
you were not mistaken in your statement to 
Doctor Emmet, and if the names of Tefft and 
of Gilmour — your "intimate friend"'- should 
not be excluded from the category of "mean 
collectors," thus doubling the number of your 
"honorable exceptions?" 

I think I will not call any witnesses, because 
I have none excepting myself. Truly, my own 
experience has led me to a conclusion quite 
different from that which the dear old Doctor 
announced so dogmatically. That experience, 
I admit, has not been extensive, but there has 
been a great change in autograph hunting 
since the Doctor's day and generation. Au- 
tograph collecting in this country was then in 
its infancy; the collecting of to-day bears a 
similar relation to that of fifty years ago that 
the telephone bears to the post or the Chicago 
Flyer to the deliberate trains on the old Cam- 
den and Amboy. It has been my good fortune 
to find the genuine collectors fair-minded, 
generous, and sympathetic, and I have often 
profited by their generosity. I hesitate to 
"name names" but perhaps I may be pardoned 
for mentioning the late Elliot Danforth, and 
also the scholarly Boston lawyer, Charles P. 
Greenough. Laurence Hutton too, was liberal 

46 



DOCTOR SPRAGUE 

and I am grateful to him, although I do not 
accept his peculiar views about autographs. 
As there is a "science falsely so-called/ there 
are collectors who do not deserve the hon- 
orable name; and I am sure that if I could 
summon the shade of Sprague to this mortal 
sphere he would readily admit that his incau- 
tious assertion was the result of some tempo- 
rary obscuration of the mind and that he did 
not really mean it. 



47 



MARTIN VAN BUREN THE LAWYER 
Read before the New York State 
Bar Association, 1905 



MARTIN VAN BUREN, 
THE LAWYER 

THE assembling of the lawyers of a 
State each year for the interchange 
of thought, the comparison of views, 
and the encouragement of fraternal 
feeling, derives its value not only from the 
consideration of legal problems and the study 
of legal principles, but also from the opportun- 
ity which it affords of perpetuating the mem- 
ory of the founders of our bar. I believe that 
it is not foreign to the purposes of our Asso- 
ciation to devote a portion of its time to the 
lawyers of the past; that it is not inappropriate 
to turn for a moment from the learned essays 
of whose worth and dignity we are all prO" 
f oundly sensible in order to review by way of 
historical reminiscence the careers of those 
who adorned the first century of the jurispru- 
dence of the State of New York. Such studies 
may not add materially to the sum of our 
knowledge, but they are useful in the promo- 
tion of the brotherly spirit and of the profes- 
sional pride which every well constituted bar 
should possess and cherish. 

51 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

The name of Martin Van Buren has been 
obscured and his fame as a lawyer has been 
dimmed by the persistent injustice of posterity. 
Nothing is more unfair than the judgment of 
an indifferent public concerning a man who 
did not carry his success to a dramatic climax. 
The majority of us have no time to waste in 
the appreciation of men who have suffered 
defeat; and Van Buren, after a life of triumphs, 
was defeated at the end. The career which 
goes on from victory to victory, and terminates 
at the supreme moment-the career of such 
men as Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley-is 
secure and the decision of the world gives to 
them the crown of immortality. It was not the 
fortune of Van Buren to preserve his hold up- 
on the imagination of succeeding generations. 

Few men of the present comprehend the 
truth that Martin Van Buren was a great law- 
yer in the days when lawyers needed something 
more than a copy of the Code, Abbott's Forms, 
and the latest edition of White on Corporations 
to qualify them for successful practice; when 
it was not necessary to search through hun- 
dreds upon hundreds of volumes in order to 
ascertain in how many different ways the 
courts have decided the same question; but 
when original thought and creative genius 

52 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 



were requisite for leadership in the battles of 
the bar. People think of him as a politician 
who was styled "The Kinderhook Fox" and 
"The Little Magician;" supposed to be cunning 
and devious in his methods; who, as they are 
inclined to believe, reached the highest place 
in the land by adroit manipulation and sedu- 
lous self-seeking. They regard him as one who 
was, in the vernacular, a skilful wire-puller; 
master of the arts by which the people are 
often deceived into promoting a charlatan, a 
trickster, and a shallow and plausible manager 
of men, to the loftiest positions in the com- 
monwealth. The fallacy of this judgment has 
been admirably demonstrated by our fellow- 
lawyer, Edward M. Shepard, in his masterly 
biography of Van Buren which many compe- 
tent critics regard as the best of the American 
Statesmen Series. 

There is something almost ludicrous in the 
unfairness with which men treat political ad- 
versaries. One instance affords an example of 
the way in which reputations may be made 
and destroyed. Charles Francis Adams, can- 
didate for Vice-President on the Free Soil 
ticket in 1848 with Van Buren at its head, was 
confronted with his printed assertions of 1844 
that Van Buren made "a trade of public affairs," 

53 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

was "fixed to nothing" but his own interest, 
and that his "cold and temporizing policy'' at 
that time was "symptomatic of treachery here- 
after." Mr. Adams, frigid New Englander and 
utterly devoid of any sense of humor, was 
troubled greatly as he wrote gravely: "These 
opinions I then held but [Mr. Van Buren] has 
done much to make me change them. * * * 
Mr. Van Buren is a mixed character. In early 
life, right; in middle life swayed to the wrong 
by his ambition and his associations—he seems 
towards the close of his career to be again 
falling into the right channel." The test of 
right and wrong was whether or not he agreed 
with Charles Francis Adams. If it had not 
been for the accident of their agreement in 
1848, the original judgment of Mr. Adams 
would have stood upon the record unreversed. 
It is a shallow observer who cannot see that 
in the life of Van Buren one unceasing pur- 
pose ran—to promote what he conscientiously 
believed to be for the best interests of his 
country. If he made errors—and there are few 
public men who do not make errors occasion- 
ally—they were honest errors. It is given to 
but few New Yorkers and to all New England- 
ers to be infallible. 
But we are not concerned at present with 

54 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Martin Van Buren,Senator of the United States. 
Governor, Secretary of State, Vice-President 
and President; we are dealing only with Mar- 
tin Van Buren, counsellor at law, who was at 
twenty-six Surrogate of his County, at thirty a 
member of the highest appellate court of his 
State, at thirty-three Attorney General of New 
York; and until his election as Governor one 
of the busiest and most prosperous members 
of the bar. From 1828 until his death in 1 8 6 2 
he gave no time to the law. To him who looks 
upon a professional life as an ideal one, it may 
be permitted to regret that he bartered for the 
uncertain and illusive rewards of politics the 
glorious years which might have been given 
to the noble work of an able, independent, 
high-minded and conscientious advocate. Is 
the memory of the politician, often obscured 
by erroneous opinion, but lasting in a sense, bet- 
ter than the memory of the great lawyer? In 
later generations the fame of such men as 
George Wood, Charles O'Conor, William Cur- 
tis Noyes, and Nicholas Hill will surely be of 
no less value than that of the men who wan- 
dered from the law into the benighted regions 
of politics. 

Of our twenty-five Presidents, all but five 
have been lawyers of more or less capacity, 

55 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

but it is safe to say that none of the lawyer-Pres- 
idents have been as eminent in the profession 
as Martin Van Buren and Benjamin Harrison. 
Both of these men were leaders at the bar in 
their respective States, and took part in the 
argument of great causes. Mr. Lincoln was 
a shrewd and successful trial lawyer before 
juries in what was in his time a comparatively 
undeveloped Western State, but his opportun- 
ities to demonstrate his effectiveness in the 
highest courts were not sufficient to enable 
him to prove his title to equality with his pre- 
decessor from New York or with his successor 
from Indiana. Pierce had a reputation in New 
Hampshire, Buchanan was honored in Penn- 
sylvania, and Fillmore, Arthur and Cleveland 
were greatly respected in New York; but they 
achieved distinction in the sphere of politics 
rather than in the domain of the courts. The 
qualities which gain political preferment are 
not always those which win triumphs before 
the judges. 

Van Buren was the son of a farmer of 
moderate means, and he had neither the ben- 
efits nor the disadvantages of a college educa- 
tion. When at fourteen he left the Kinderhook 
Academy, he began the study of the law with 
Francis Silvester, who is almost invariably 

56 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

styled in sketches of Van Buren, as "a respect- 
able lawyer of Kinderhook," and he was for 
one year a student in the New York office of 
William P. Van Ness, afterwards United States 
District Judge. Van Ness was only four years 
the senior of his student and, according to 
Hammond, the historian of early New York 
politics, he was "one of the most shrewd and 
sagacious men that the State of New York 
ever produced." I am not prepared to say 
that every lawyer should have a college train- 
ing, but the conditions to-day are not the same 
as those of 1802. Colleges then were ma- 
terially different from the colleges and uni- 
versities of to-day. I doubt if Van Buren 
would have been any more or less successful 
if he had been a college man. As to a clerk- 
ship in an office in New York City, I am con- 
vinced that it helped him. We city men rec- 
ognize the fact that the country lawyer is 
usually better founded in the principles than 
the busy men of the metropolis who are com- 
pelled to concern themselves more about the 
doing of a thing than about the technicalities 
of the performance. The magnates of finance 
in New York City care very little about the 
niceties of the law; they want to achieve re- 
sults. In 1802 there was not so much differ- 

^1 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ence between the legal business of the city 
and that of the country ; but yet I think the 
year's work in New York was of advantage 
to Van Buren, although he says himself that 
Van Ness did not have much business. 

There must always be a legend connected 
with the youth of a distinguished lawyer, and 
there is one about Van Buren which the sol- 
emn Mr. Holland relates in the "Life" pub- 
lished in 1835. It is said that "the young ad- 
vocate, not yet sixteen years of age, success- 
fully managed a cause of great interest and 
considerable importance against an opponent 
who was then in full practice at the bar, and 
has since filled several responsible public 
offices. The future statesman was then so 
small of stature that he was placed upon a 
table to address the jury." By the time the 
tale reaches the year 1888, Mr. Shepard makes 
the opponent none other than Silvester him- 
self, and the justice has the lad stand upon a 
bench, with the exhortation, "There, Mat. 
beat your master." I have serious doubts 
whether, even in that generation, small boys 
in law offices were allowed to try important 
causes against the lawyer with whom they 
were serving. 

In the Congressional Library at Washing- 

58 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ton, where the papers of many of our Presi- 
dents repose, may be found the manuscript 
autobiography which Mr. Van Buren began 
to prepare in his seventy-third year and which, 
like many such works, was never completed. 
It has not been published, but I am informed 
that it is to be printed under the auspices of 
Mr. Worthington C. Ford, the efficient chief 
of the Manuscript Division of the Library. 
Most of the pages are devoted to politics, for 
the author remarks that the briefest sketch of 
the incidents of his professional life would oc- 
cupy too much space and that "they must, 
with one or two exceptions, be left to the ju- 
dicial reports and to the traditions of the 
times." He tells us however a number of in- 
cidents connected with the lawyers of the day 
and with his early life which make us regret 
that he did not dwell more fully upon his ex- 
periences as a lawyer, and I am tempted to in- 
dulge in a few quotations. Although the 
story of his boyish triumphs may be apochry- 
phal, there is no doubt that he was preco- 
cious. In the autobiography, after deploring 
his devotion to light reading instead of to the 
graver studies, he says: "In place of the 
studies by which I would thus have given em- 
ployment to an uncommonly active mind, I 

5Q 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

adopted at a very early age the practice of 
appearing as counsel before arbitrators and 
inferior tribunals, and my success was such as 
to give rise to exaggerated impressions that 
were brought before the public in the course 
of my after political career." He adds, later 
on: "I cannot pass from the subject of my 
early professional career in inferior tribunals 
without a caution to my young friends, the 
circumstances of whose start in life may re- 
semble my own, against the adoption of a 
similar course. The temptation to anticipate 
professional fame is a strong one, and my suc- 
cess, humble as it has been, is well calculated 
to mislead young men of genius and ambition. 
Whatever the degree of that success may have 
been, they may be assured that it would have 
been much greater and more substantial if like 
many others who may not have succeeded as 
well, I had first acquired a sound education 
and stored my mind with useful knowledge." 
This is rather an amusing bit of self-apprecia- 
tion disguised as self-depreciation. 

He was licensed as an attorney in Novem- 
ber, 1803, and opened an office in his native 
village in association with his half-brother, 
James I. Van Alen. At the next term of the 
county courts he was admitted as attorney and 

60 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

counsellor, and in February 1807 he reached 
the ultimate stage of professional standing, 
the office of Counsellor in the Supreme Court. 
In those days they were fond of fine distinc- 
tions in the grades of lawyers; they had not 
learned that the lawyer finds his level by the 
force of his intellect rather than by the title 
which he bears. In 1808 he was appointed 
Surrogate of Columbia County and served 
until 18 1 3. In 1809 he removed to Hudson 
and became a partner of Cornelius Miller, the 
father of Judge Theodore Miller whom most 
of us remember as a Judge of the Court of 
Appeals. It is perhaps almost undignified to 
refer to the fact that Van Buren and Miller 
did what is called a "paying business." It is 
very pleasant to think of our profession only 
in its loftier aspects, but we cannot deny that 
there is a financial element about it which is 
not devoid of serious interest. The question 
of pay cannot be overlooked; and it is no 
mean test of the ability of the men who try 
and argue causes, this test of the sums which 
clients are willing to pay for their services. 
At the age of forty-six he was compelled by 
the exigencies of public life to relinquish pri- 
vate practice. He had amassed what was at 
that time a comfortable fortune, acquired by 

61 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

faithful and distinguished professional labor. 
In the autobiography, he sums up his legal 
life thus: "For my business I was to a marked 
extent indebted to the public at large, having 
received but little from the mercantile interest 
or from corporations, and none from the great 
landed aristocracies of the country. It was 
notwithstanding fully equal to my desires and 
far beyond my most sanguine expectations. I 
was not worth a shilling when I commenced 
my professional career. I have never since 
owed a debt that I could not pay on demand 
nor known what it is to be without money, 
and I retired from the practice of my profes- 
sion with means adequate to my own support 
and to leave to my children not large estates 
but as much as I think it for their advantage to 
receive. The cases in which I was employed 
embraced not only the ordinary subjects of 
litigation between man and man in commu- 
nities like that in which I resided, but extended 
to the most intricate and important cases that 
arose during the last fifteen or twenty years of 
my practice. In the management of these I was 
repeatedly associated with and opposed to 
such men as Richard Harrison, Aaron Burr, 
Thomas Addis Emmet, Daniel Webster, John 
Wells, John V. Henry, Peter Van Schaack, 

62 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Abraham Van Vechten, David B. Ogden, 
Samuel A. Talcott, and Elisha Williams-a gal- 
axy of great lawyers scarcely equalled in the 
professional ranks of any country." 

The bar of Columbia County has always 
been conspicuous for ability, but it was un- 
usually brilliant in the early days of the nine- 
teenth century. Jacob Rutsen Van Rensselaer, 
Ambrose Spencer, Thomas P. Grosvenor, 
William W. Van Ness— who must not be con- 
founded with Van Buren's preceptor— and 
Elisha Williams made it famous all over the 
State, and indeed among lawyers all over the 
country. Those who have a liking for the 
stories of the lives of lawyers will find its his- 
tory well told in the privately printed book 
of Peyton L. Miller-the grandson of Van 
Buren's partner, Cornelius Miller- entitled 
"A Group of Great Lawyers of Columbia 
County, New York," printed in the neat 
and attractive style of the De Vinne Press. 
There you may read of Van Buren, of Tilden, 
of the Livingstons, of the Spencers; of the mul- 
titudinous Van Nesses and Vanderpoels; and 
of the mighty Williams. The tradition of 
Williams still survives. Raymond, the biog- 
rapher, who wrote more than fifty years ago, 
says that after Van Ness was made a Judge of 

63 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

the Supreme Court in 1807, Van Buren was 
employed in the trial of almost every impor- 
tant cause that was tried in Columbia County 
until he removed to Albany, and generally 
opposed to Williams. Van Buren was a ple- 
beian, a Democrat; Williams, an aristocrat and 
a Federalist. Emmons, who wrote a futile sort 
of sketch of Van Buren in 1835, says that from 
1809 the two men divided, and for many years 
continued to divide, the professional business 
of the county. He adds: " The writer has of ten 
witnessed, in other places, displays of great 
forensic talent; but he has never seen causes 
tried with anything like the zeal, the skill, or 
the effect, which was always exhibited at a 
Columbia circuit during the period referred 
to." Williams was witty, sarcastic and elo- 
quent; Van Buren was ingenious, persuasive 
and argumentative. When the two men were 
pitted against each other before juries they 
were greeted by crowded audiences. To-day, 
no crowds assemble to applaud contending 
counsel, unless the cause is scandalous and 
sensational in its nature. When I went to the 
London Law Courts a few years ago and asked 
the solemn attendant to be shown to some 
court-room, he assured me that there was 
nothing going on which would interest me, 

64 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

because there were no divorce cases on trial. 
He had unconsciously gauged the popular 
standard of preference. 

Williams was a tall, handsome and imposing 
person, nearly ten years older than his adver- 
sary, while Van Buren was small, and although 
not insignificant in stature, yet not impressive. 
He had none of those physical qualities which 
often carry weight with jurymen. To our 
modern eyes he would have been almost 
amusing if the description which Henry B. 
Stanton gives of him as he was in 1828 is ac- 
curate. "Mr. Van Buren," says Stanton in his 
Random Recollections^ "was rather an exquisite 
in appearance. His complexion was a bright 
blond and he dressed accordingly. On this 
occasion he wore an elegant snuff-colored 
broadcloth coat with a velvet collar; his cravat 
was orange with modest lace tips; his vest was 
of a pearl hue; his trousers were white duck; 
his shoes were morocco; his neatly fitting 
gloves were yellow kid ; his long-furred beaver 
hat with broad brim was of a Quaker color." 

It is difficult to imagine our leaders of to-day 
arrayed in such a fashion. I can fancy that if 
any of these eminent counsel should appear 
thus clad in the stately room where sits our 
Court of Appeals, its dignified Clerk would 

65 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

fall in speechless syncope and the black- 
gowned judges would disappear through that 
mysterious back door which always arouses 
my curiosity. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes once asked Gulian 
C. Verplanck who, on the whole, seemed the 
most considerable person he ever met, and 
Verplanck answered "Elisha Williams." He 
was a worthy foe. The best comparison of the 
two men was drawn by Benjamin Franklin 
Butler, the partner of Van Buren from his 
admission to the bar until 1828 and a student 
in the office of Van Buren & Miller, a member 
of the cabinet of Jackson and of Van Buren. 
and Van Bur en's most intimate friend. " Never." 
said Butler, "were two men more dissimilar. 
Both were eloquent, but the eloquence of Wil- 
liams was declamatory and exciting ; that of Van 
Buren insinuating and delightful. Williams 
had the livelier imagination; Van Buren the 
sounder judgment. The former presented the 
strong points of his case in bolder relief, in- 
vested them in a more brilliant coloring, 
indulged a more unlicensed and magnificent 
invective, and gave more life and variety to 
his arguments by his peculiar wit and inimi- 
table humor; but Van Buren was his superior 
in analyzing, arranging and combining the in- 

66 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

sulated materials* in comparing and weighing 
testimony, in unravelling the web of intricate 
affairs, in eviscerating truth from the mass of 
diversified and conflicting evidence, in soften- 
ing the heart and moulding it to his purpose, 
and in working into the judgments of his 
hearers the conclusions of his own perspicu- 
ous and persuasive reasoning." There is an 
ancient story which expresses the truth more 
concisely than the stately, old-fashioned phra- 
ses of the great Reviser. Williams is reported 
as saying tersely of his rival: "I get all the 
verdicts and you get all the judgments." To 
those who remember the naive remark of the 
British juryman that Sir James Scarlett always 
won his cases because he was always on the 
right side, this observation of Williams has its 
significance. But it brings to my mind the 
story which William Allen Butler was fond of 
telling about the Irishman who was present in 
the court of Judge Bosworth, and who said to 
the lawyer "Ye may say what ye please, but 
there's an old, white-headed chap up there 
who gets more verdicts than any of yees." 
Williams had his way with the juries, but in 
the end the judges determined the controversy. 
Van Buren himself says of Williams: "I in- 
variably encountered him with more appre- 

67 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

hension at the circuits than any of the great 
men I have named, and I am sure I speak but 
the opinion of his professional contempora- 
ries when I say that he was the greatest nisi 
prius lawyer of the New York bar. * * * it 
seemed scarcely possible to excel his skill in 
the examination of witnesses or of his address- 
es to the jury, but with these his ambition 
seemed satisfied; for arguments at the Term 
he was seldom well prepared and far less 
successful." 

Do you ever take down from the shelves 
the dingy volumes of Johnson or of Cowen, 
whose wretched law-calf binding comes off 
on your hands and your coat, and skim through 
the contents for the mere pleasure of it? It is 
like the study of the mastodon by the palae- 
ontologist. If a man cites Johnson or Cowen 
now-a-days, his adversary is adamant and the 
judges talk among themselves about something 
contemporaneous. You might as well quote 
the Year Books, or refer to East or Hobart or 
Plowden. But there is in all the old reports 
abundant material for delightful study. It may 
be that they are not what might be styled 
"light literature," but they are infinitely more 
suggestive, more stimulating to the imagina- 
tion, and indeed more instructive than the one 

68 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

hundred and odd volumes of New York Re- 
ports, or the latest volume of the Federal 
Reporter. You cannot fail to discover that 
there were giants in those days--giants at the 
bar and on the bench-and you may measure 
their stature. In those historic days, briefs were 
not prepared by clerks or opinions dictated to 
stenographers; counsel were not held down to 
hours or minutes; judges did not move uneasily 
in their seats and throw aside the records as a 
signal for the termination of an argument too 
prolix. The highest energies of the courts were 
not devoted to the question whether or not the 
cause was technically before them, and mat-- 
ters of large importance were accorded the 
full measure of consideration, as when the 
Court of Appeals gave an entire term to the 
case of Curtis v. Leavitt which involved 
$1,500,000 and devoted two hundred and 
ninety-seven pages of the 15th N. Y. to the 
statement and the opinions. I do not mean to 
be understood as presuming to utter a word of 
criticism upon our courts of to-day or upon 
counsel of the present. The whole country 
and its business have grown so enormously 
that speed has come to be a necessity. The 
volume of litigation, the magnitude of amounts. 
has continually increased, but the day is still 

69 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

but twenty-four hours long and it cannot be 
made longer by legislatures or even by Con- 
gress, notwithstanding the Interstate Com- 
merce clause of the Federal Constitution.- If 
the stately and solemn lawyers or the grave 
and deliberate judges of the olden time could 
be brought in contact with the conditions of 
the present, they would gasp with breathless 
amazement, fly to their libraries, and perish 
from intellectual apoplexy. 

An examination of the books reveals the 
fact that Van Buren s name^it is spelled there 
"Van Beuren"— first appears in 3d Johnson, 
174, where on behalf of the defendant he 
moved for a new trial in the case of Wilson 
and Gibbs v. Reed. It was an action of trover 
about a hogshead of rum, and the amount in- 
volved was eighty dollars. The plaintiff had 
a verdict, and the motion came on to be heard 
at the May Term of the Supreme Court in 
1808, Elisha Williams and Mr. Kirtland op- 
posing. Van Buren was beaten, the court 
(per Spencet J.) saying that "the defendant 
must take nothing by his motion." In the next 
case the young advocate was more fortunate. 
It was an action of ejectment (Jackson ex, dem, 
Whitlock V. Deyoj 3 Johns. 421). In those 
times the courts were almost as full of eject- 

70 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ment suits as they now are of suits to recover 
damages for personal injuries, those obstructers 
of the calendars and encouragers of fraud, per- 
jury, champerty, and maintenance. The prog- 
ress of the ages seems to make the world 
wither and the individual more and more, so 
that disputes about land have practically dis- 
appeared, and questions about personal in- 
juries appear to have supplanted them, not to 
the benefit of the bar. We have become 
divided between real lawyers and ambulance 
lawyers. It is difficult to imagine Hoffman, 
Radclif f , Van Vechten, Van Buren, Livingston, 
Cady and Jordan contending over problems 
of contributory negligence and the vagaries 
of guards and motor-men. Returning to the 
Deyo case, the plaintiff had a verdict and 
Elisha Williams came forward to ask for 
a new trial. Van Buren, for plaintiff, was 
"stopped by the court." Williams was annihi- 
lated on the spot, the court holding that an 
equitable title cannot be set up in ejectment 
against the legal title. In the same volume 
(3d Johnson, 498) Van Buren appears again, 
(November Term, 1808) in another ejectment 
suit, Jackson ex. dem. Van Deusen vs, Scissam^ 
and on this occasion Williams was with him. 
They moved for a new trial and had the vic- 

71 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

tory. So at twenty-six. Van Buren was already 
arguing cases in the Supreme Court and was 
either with the famous Williams or against 
him. Evidently he had made his mark, and 
friends and neighbors, whose judgment is usu- 
ally sound, estimated him at his true worth. 

I do not find that he came before the Court 
of Errors until the argument of Trice v, Jackson, 
8 Johnson, 496, where he was associated with 
Van Vechten, whom he afterwards succeeded 
in the office of Attorney-General, against Mr. 
Sudam and Williams, and he was defeated. 
This is one of the three cases in error in that 
volume, so few were the appeals to the high- 
est court. He was of counsel for John V. N. 
Yates, in the famous case of Yates vs. Lansing j 
9th Johnson, 396, with Thomas Addis Emmet 
as an associate and John V. Henry and Van 
Vechten as opponents. It was the most impor- 
tant of the six "Cases in Error" reported in that 
volume. The mention of Henry reminds me 
of an autograph letter of Van Buren to him, 
dated in 182 1, which has no particular interest 
except that it shows the easy way in which 
they practiced in those days. It is before me 
now. Van Buren says: "I find on examining 
the bill of exceptions in our —cause [I cannot 
decipher the name -he wrote abominably], 

72 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

that I have omitted the statement by you of the 
deeds contained in the exception, an omission 
which leaves the case imperfect and may em- 
barrass both of us. I send you my notes to 
show that the amendment I send for your 
approbation is correct, and you will find it so 
by a reference to yours. Be so good as to look 
at it this evening and authorize my clerk to 
alter the bill conformable to it. Your friend, 
M. V. Buren." He generally signed ** V. Buren" 
abbreviating the "Van." It must have been 
more comfortable to practice law in those days 
than it is now, for we do not make up or 
amend our records in such a carelessly amica- 
ble way. 

He asserts that he was extremely unwilling 
to accept political office, but circumstances 
compelled him to become a candidate. In 
November, 1812, he took his seat as Senator 
from the Middle District and thus became a 
member of the Court for the Correction of 
Errors and Trial of Impeachments, that odd tri- 
bunal composed of the Chancellor, the Judges 
of the Supreme Court, the Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor, and the thirty-two Senators, of which 
might be said what has been said of the Court 
of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey, that it 
was too large for a court and too small for a 

73 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

town-meeting. His first opinion was given in 
Barry vs, Mandell^ loth Johnson, 563, decided 
in March, 1 8 1 3 . This is the famous cbw-escape 
case which fills nineteen pages of the fine 
print of my edition of Johnson, and to which 
not only Van Buren but Chancellor Lansing 
gave the most laborious investigation. I doubt 
if our Court of Appeals would have accorded 
to it more than a few scanty lines in the Mem- 
oranda at the end of a volume. :c a j 
Mr. Shepard gives an account of this ca§e 
which for succinct statement and dignified 
humor is not to be equalled, and I shall not 
attempt to paraphrase it. An unfortunate 
debtor was released from imprisonment for 
debt on a bond to keep within the jail liberties. 
He was personally conducting a certain cow, 
which animal, after the manner of cows ever 
since the flood, jumped about unwarrantably 
and from time to time dragged its unhappy 
conductor four, six or ten feet outside of the 
limits. On the theory that each cow-compelled 
excursion constituted an escape, the creditor 
sued the sureties on the bond. The Supreme 
Court, Kent presiding, sustained the recovery. 
Van Buren did not like the Federalist Kent, 
and he had a grim delight in punishing that 
luminary of the law. Moreover he had the 

74 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

modern view of the absurd policy of imprison- 
ing men for failure to pay simple contract 
debts. The decision of the Supreme Court 
was reversed, and the young Senator filed an 
opinion far more elaborate than that of Chan- 
cellor Lansing with whom he concurred. As 
Shepard says it "could not have been more 
carefully done had something greater seemed 
at stake than a bovine vagary and a few dol- 
lars." A portion at least of this opinion will 
bear quotation. Van Buren had his ear close 
to the ground for popular sympathy, and he 
proved his breadth of mind and his apprecia- 
tion of the common feelings of mankind. Al- 
though it is a legal opinion, it is a fair example 
of what Mr. Shepard once described to me as 
his "political-partisan style, one of the best 
styles practiced by statesmen." Van Buren said: 
"Permit me next, respectfully, to examine 
with what propriety it can be alleged, that 
escapes of this description are so far against 
the policy of the statute, as to render the con- 
struction of the court below proper and nec- 
cessary. As it has truly been remarked, *this 
statute was passed for humane purposes;' it 
was among the first concessions which were 
made by that inflexible spirit, which has hith- 
erto maintained its hold on society, authoriz- 

75 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ing imprisonment for debt. Coeval with the 
authority of imprisonment for debt have been 
the exertions of men of intelligence, of reflec- 
tion and philanthropy, to mitigate its rigor; 
of men who viewed it as a practice funda- 
mentally wrong, a practice which forces their 
fellow creatures from society, from their 
friends and their agonized families into the 
dreary walls of a prison; which compels them 
to leave all those fascinating endearments, to 
become an inmate with vermin; which con- 
fines them within the same walls that contain 
the midnight incendiary and the ruthless as- 
sassin; not for crimes which they have com- 
mitted; not for frauds which they have prac- 
ticed on the credulous and unwary; (for such 
distinctions are not made;) but for the misfor- 
tune of being poor; of being unable to satisfy 
the all-digesting stomach of some ravenous 
creditor; of men who looked upon the practice 
as confounding virtue and vice, and destroy- 
ing the distinction between guilt and inno- 
cence, which should unceasingly be cherished 
in any well regulated government." 

After eloquence like this Barry's cow should 
be as immortal as the Chicago cow of Mrs. 
O'Leary. But it was a wise utterance for a 
rising politician, and the general sentiment of 

76 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

succeeding days has approved the judgment. 
I have said that he disliked Kent: he cer- 
tainly took a sly pleasure in tormenting the 
distinguished Chief Justice and Chancellor, 
but in the autobiography he bestows upon 
him the most exalted praise. He tells one or 
two stories of Kent which are new, at least to 
me, and which exhibit the Chancellor in a new 
light. Van Buren was calling upon him one 
day, and found a young man applying for 
admission as a Solicitor in Chancery who was 
manifestly not "within the rules," but who 
cited the case of another applicant who had 
recently been admitted. "I deny it, sir!" cried 
the Chancellor. "It is not true. I did not admit 
him. Hebrokem\^ On another occasion, says 
Van Buren, " he displayed in my presence what 
in almost any other man would have been re- 
garded as undignified violence of temper and 
manner, but would not, to one who knew him 
well, bear any such construction. The rever- 
sals of the preceding day having been referred 
to, he broke out in a mock tirade against the 
judges, to the following effect: *They are un- 
fit for their places, Mr. Van Buren, you know 
that they are! Spencer and Van Ness are able 
enough, but instead of studying their cases they 
devote their time to politics. You know that 

77 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

as well as I do ! As to Judge Yates'— raising his 
hands --'I need say nothing. You should roll 
him back to Schenectady! '--(an allusion to 
Judge Yates' personal appearance, borrowed 
from Mr. Clinton) --'and as to my cousin Piatt I 
He is only fit to be head deacon to a Presby- 
terian church and for nothing elsef If this is 
Mr. Van Buren's idea of pleasant jocosity, I 
wonder what he would regard as rather bitter 
personal abuse. I have never had the honor of 
knowing any judge who keenly enjoyed rever- 
sals of his own decisions. 

The next case in which Van Buren delivered 
an opinion was the celebrated one of Ambrose 
Spencer vs. Solomon Southwick (lo Johnson, 
259). Southwick, who was a sort of Thomas 
W. Lawson in the politics of the period, had 
publicly accused Spencer of misconduct as a 
Senator in putting through the famous charter 
of the Manhattan Company— still enduring as 
one of our great financial institutions, but not 
the only corporation which has in its inception 
aimed to supply the public with pure water. 
He charged Spencer, one of the most eminent 
men of his day, with having by hypocrisy and 
deceit procured the passage of the act of incor- 
poration at a time when he was pecuniarily 
interested in the enterprise. Spencer filed a 

78 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

replication, setting up the fact that he was not 
so interested and Southwick demurred. The 
demurrer was sustained in the Supreme Court, 
but the decision was reversed, by an unani- 
mous vote. Van Buren writing for reversal. In 
Graves v. Dash^ 12 Johnson, 17, he made a few 
remarks, but the majority was against him. 
''We look at these old opinions and the 
abstracts of the arguments of counsel, and we 
are apt to think that in those ancient times 
lawyers were far more learned and courts far 
more astute than they are in this twentieth 
century. It may be so as far as the lawyers are 
concerned, but we must not forget that men 
used to lead what is now called "a simple life" 
and that the complexities of this generation 
were wholly unknown in those halcyon days. 
The manifold complications of this generation 
would have bewildered the lawyers of the 
olden times. The subtle questions which agi- 
tated our courts a century ago have long since 
been relegated to obscurity. Our courts must 
needs deal with modern problems, and they 
endeavor to decide them according to their 
view of what is right-often, however, if I may 
be permitted to express an humble opinion, 
giving their judgment in favor of what they 
happen to think is right in the particular case 

7Q 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

before them, rather than with regard to rule 
and precedent. Many years ago I was closely 
associated with a venerable judge who once 
occupied a place on the bench of our highest 
court, and I remember that he told me seri- 
ously that " the Court of Appeals never decides 
a case except as it wishes to decide it." I have 
had frequent occasion since then to admit that 
he told the truth; and I have often wished that 
there had been more cordial unanimity of sen- 
timent between us on the subject before them. 
At the same time, I believe that in character, 
capacity and intelligence the bench of our 
own day and of our own State compares fav- 
orably with that of any time or of any country. 
If experience brings to a man the capacity to 
be fair and just, it must convince him that it is 
a sad mistake to censure the judges whose 
views differ from his own. 

In February, 1815, Van Buren was chosen 
the successor of the distinguished Abraham 
Van Vechten as Attorney-General—an office 
which was considered to be of such eminence 
and importance that only lawyers of the great- 
est reputation were selected to fill it. Van 
Buren won the place by the casting vote of 
(Governor Tompkins, against the influence of 
Ambrose Spencer who was beginning to think 

80 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

that his young friend was becoming too pow- 
erful. He held the of f ice until July, 1 8 19, when 
he was removed by a combination of Clin- 
tonians and Federalists. The salary of the 
Attorney-General was then $5-50 a day, with 
some costs. Although he continued to serve 
as State Senator until 1820 he delivered few 
judicial opinions while he was Attorney-Gen- 
eral. Removing to Albany in 1816, he took 
in partnership with him his pupil, Butler: and 
after his senior's election to the United States 
Senate in 182 1 Butler undoubtedly bore the 
burden of the business, although Van Buren 
appeared now and then in the Court of Errors. 

He did not confine his attention to courts of 
law, but frequently appeared before the Chan- 
cellor. The fourth volume of Johnson s Chan- 
cery Reports contains seven of his cases, in six 
of which he was successful. One of these 
cases (Troup vs, Rice^ 4th Johns. Ch., 228), 
Charles Butler said that it was opened by 
Van Buren for the complainants " with a speech 
surpassing anything perhaps ever delivered 
by him." 

It would be tedious to enumerate the vari- 
ous litigations in which he was concerned; but 
there are two reported cases which show him 
at his best, both arising out of the celebrated 

81 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Medcef Eden contTOvetsy.'-'fFilkes vs, Lion^ 
2 Cowen, 333, argued in December, 1823. 
and Varick vs, Jackson ^ 2 Wendell, 166, ar- 
gued in December, 1828. The reporters give 
his arguments quite at length, —seventeen 
pages being devoted to his presentation of the 
first case and twenty-three pages in the second 
case. He had against him in 1823, Samuel 
Jones and Samuel A. Talcott, and in 1828, 
Boyd and Van Vechten. His associate was 
Aaron Burr; in fact it was Burr's own case. 
Eden was a brewer in New York and when 
he died in 1798 he left to his two sons a large 
amount of real estate on Manhattan Island. If 
either died childless, the other was to inherit 
the share of the deceased son. They squan- 
dered their property and lost their lands. 
Questions were raised about the validity of 
the transactions, and Hamilton and Burr were 
consulted, Hamilton being of the opinion that 
the estate could not be recovered and Burr 
advising to the contrary. Hamilton's views 
prevailed, but when Burr returned from 
Europe with no money and no practice, his 
attention was drawn to the matter by the death 
of one of the sons. He took up the case and 
made it his chief business. The story is graph- 
ically told by Parton in his "Life of Aaron 

82 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Burr," but it is too long to be given here. 
There was no more astute real property law- 
yer than Aaron Burr, and if he had devoted 
himself to his profession instead of to the gods 
of politics, he might have been enshrined 
among the heroes whom we love to honor. 
He was shrewd enough to know that he must 
remain well hidden in the background and 
must put forward some influential personage 
as the leader. He chose Van Buren, whose 
enemies were always fond of comparing him 
to Burr. The bitter old diarist, John Quincy 
Adams, said of Van Buren and Burr: "There 
is much resemblance of character, manners 
and even person, between the two men." Be 
that as it may. Burr chose Van Buren as coun- 
sel and their efforts were crowned with a 
triumph. How Burr tactfully subordinated 
himself may be seen by the reports. In 
IVilkes vs. Lion J he merely said that "he should 
add but little on the three first points of the 
defence; the ability with which all the points 
had been examined by his associate forbade 
his saying much in relation to either;" and in 
Varick vs, Jackson he declined to argue the 
principal question, making only a few remarks 
about the examination of a witness. At this 
day, when the sums involved are so great, it is 

83 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

amusing to recall the remarks of Kent about 
this case: "This may well be considered," said 
the commentator, " a grave and important ques- 
tion, demanding the utmost care and attention 
on the part of the court; for it was said on the 
argument that property to the amount of half 
a million dollars depended upon the decision 
to be made in this case." 

His latest appearance before juries was in 
the trial of the Astor case in which he was 
associated with Kent and with Daniel Webster, 
and of the Sailor's Snug Harbor case in the fall 
of 1827. It was in the course of the last men- 
tioned trial that the great Thomas Addis 
Emmet had the fatal stroke which ended his 
life and Van Buren gives a vivid description 
of the event in the Autobiography. He says: 
**I was one of the opposing counsel in the 
cause, and as the court adjourned on the pre- 
ceding day he expressed to me his surprise 
that we had kept our suit, the claim of Bishop 
Inglis of Nova Scotia to the immense estate 
called the Sailor's Snug Harbor, on foot so 
long; but added that we could not prolong its 
life beyond twelve o'clock of the next day. 
When that time arrived, I followed him from 
the bar to the stove, whither he had been 
called by an acquaintance, and said: *Well, 

84 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Mr. Emmet, the hour has come, and we are 
alive yetf *Yes/ he answered/ but you cannot 
live much longer!' Immediately after my re- 
turn to my seat, David B. Ogden said to me: 
*Look at Emmet! He is going to have a fit!' I 
looked and replied that it was a mistake. In a 
few minutes he repeated the alarm more em- 
phatically. I went to Chief Justice Thompson, 
before whom the cause was tried, and informed 
him of Mr. Ogden's suspicions. The Judge 
observed Mr. Emmet closely and replied pleas- 
antly: *No, no! Ogden is mistaken, his under- 
lip hangs a little lower than usual, but that is 
natural to him when he is writing.' At that 
instant, and as I turned towards my seat, I saw 
Mr. Emmet reel in his chair, and extend his 
hand towards a neighboring pillar. I endeav- 
ored to intercept his fall, but without success; 
he was carried to his house, and died in a few 
hours." 

While a Senator of the United States, he had 
a narrow escape from occupying a seat on the 
bench of the United States Supreme Court. 
He tells us that Smith Thompson, Secretary of 
the Navy, asked him if he would accept an 
appointment to fill the vacancy caused by the 
death of Brockholst Livingston. Rufus King 
advised him to take the place. Van Buren had 

85 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

had a difference with President Monroe about 
the postmastership of Albany, but said that if 
the President was disposed to confer the office 
upon him, he would accept it, although he had 
no desire for the position and could not con- 
sent to be regarded as an applicant for it. 
Something seems to have interfered with the 
proposed arrangement and Thompson was 
appointed to the office; and Van Buren says 
"he was as eminently qualified for it as he was 
unfit for political life." 

In dealing with Van Buren as a lawyer, it is 
not easy to refrain from quoting the words of 
Mr. Shepard. "Van Buren's work as a lawyer," 
he says, " brought him something besides wealth 
and the education and refinement of books, 
and something which neither Erskine nor 
Webster gained. The profession afforded him 
an admirable discipline in the conduct of 
affairs; and affairs, in law as out of it, are 
largely decided by human nature and its vary- 
ing peculiarities. The preparation of details; 
the keen and far-sighted arrangement of the 
best, because the most practicable plan; the 
refusal to fire off ammunition for the popular 
applause to be roused by its noise and flame; 
the clear, steady bearing in mind of the end 
to be accomplished, rather than the prolonged 

86 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

enjoyment or systematic working out of inter- 
mediate processes beyond a utilitarian neces- 
sity^all these elements Van Buren mastered 
in a signal degree, and made invaluable in 
legal practice." It is said of him that he was 
not an orator, but he persuaded men. They 
thought much more then of what may be 
called "fine speaking" than we do, and Van 
Buren was not of the order of speakers who 
arouse the tears and applause of jurymen and 
spectators; but he was effective and he had 
the art which made the British juryman dis- 
parage Scarlett in comparison with Brougham. 
We have only tradition to tell us of his exploits 
in the trial courts, for none of his addresses to 
juries were ever reported. 

It was said of him that whether before a 
jury or the court in banc he particularly excelled 
in the opening of his subject. The facts out 
of which the questions for discussion arose 
and the mode in which he intended to treat 
them were always stated with great clearness 
and address. Undoubtedly this careful lucidity 
of statement was a great factor in his power. 
We all know that the statement of facts is usu- 
ally the most important part of any argument 
and that causes are won oftener on the "state- 
ment" than on the marshalling of authorities, 

87 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

mainly perhaps because the judges generally 
know more law than we do but not so much 
about the facts of our case. William Allen 
Butler preferred to argue for the appellant 
because it gave him the first chance at the 
facts, always an advantage as he learned from 
his distinguished father who was so unfortu- 
nate as to bear the same name as a certain 
Massachusetts general. If we may judge by 
his political writings. Van Buren was elabor- 
ate and copious. I have read the autobiogra- 
phy, and it is a monument of dif f useness. He 
could speak well without much previous 
study, but he was exceedingly laborious and 
industrious, mindful of the value of careful 
preparation. In the "Life and Letters" of Mr. 
Charles Butler, who was a clerk in the office 
of Van Buren and Butler, it is recorded that 
on the first morning of his clerkship "being 
minded to despatch work he rose at half-past 
four and at five in came Mr. Van Buren him- 
self, ready for the business of the day." In a 
letter written at the time, Mr. Butler says: "I 
rise early, and what is more provoking, Mr. 
Van Buren some mornings back has risen at 
half-past four. I rise at five and find him up. 
This morning he rode five or seven miles be- 
fore seven o'clock. I can't imagine what pos- 

88 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

sesses him." He owned what in those days 
was an excellent library, and he used it sys- 
tematically. " In the stillness of the night," says 
the ornate Mr. Holland, in the inflated man- 
ner of his time, "he buried his whole soul in 
the researches of science. At that propitious 
season, he knelt at the shrine of that * jealous 
mistress which allows no rival,' and communed 
with those eloquent oracles of enlightened 
reason, which are too often allowed to repose 
in silence on the dusty shelf." All this means 
that he worked at night; but as Shepard says, 
he learned men quite as fast as he learned 
books. On the whole he seems according to 
those who knew him well, to have been fluent 
and facile; felicitous in expounding the intri- 
cacies of fact and law; mild, insinuating, never 
declamatory; going to the pith of the subject 
without the arts of rhetoric. Referring to his 
own mental habits, he relates in the autobi- 
ography that John Randolph, in one of his 
morbid moods, wrote a series of letters to 
Andrew Jackson, in which he attacked Van 
Buren. "These," he says, "General Jackson as 
was his habit in regard to all private letters 
designed to sow tares between us, sent to me 
for my perusal." Randolph said in one letter 
"that in his long experience of public life he 

89 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

had scarcely ever met with a single prominent 
man less informed than myself upon great 
questions when they were first presented, or 
who understood them better when I came to 
their discussion. I remember well the Gen- 
eral's hearty laugh when he heard me sub- 
scribe to the justice of the description." 

Many are the tales which are told of his 
imperturbable demeanor, his adroitness of 
speech, and his amusing non-committalism. 
Philip Hone, who was his bitter opponent, 
says in his Diary, referring to the stormiest 
period of Van Buren's administration, "his 
outward appearance is like the unruffled sur- 
face of the majestic river which covers rocks 
and whirlpools, but shows no marks of the 
agitation beneath." John Quincy Adams writes 
of him that like the Sosie of Moliere's Amphit- 
ryon, he was Pami de tout le monde, Adams 
tells us that Henry Clay, at a reception in the 
White House, congratulated Van Buren upon 
his happiness in being surrounded by so many 
of his friends, to which he answered "the 
weather is very fine." "No insignificant an- 
swer," says Adams, "for it implied his conscious 
assent to the satirical reflection implied in 
Clay's remark—fair weather friends." It is told 
of him that on a canal-boat journey a political 

90 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

opponent wagered a basket of wine that no 
question could be asked of him to which he 
would give a direct answer, and when the 
taker propounded to his chief the query "does 
the sun rise in the east or in the west?" Mr. 
Van Buren began his reply with the charac- 
teristic preface: "the terms *east' and *west' 
are conventional," whereupon his disheartened 
admirer exclaimed "IVe lost the bet." In all 
this we may discern only the habitual caution 
of the experienced lawyer, sensible of the 
danger which lurks in loose and unreflecting 
assertion. He was always angry at the accu- 
sation of non-committalism, calling it con- 
temptuously a "party catch- word." 

The absorbing work of the politician took 
Van Buren from the bar all too soon. After 
1828, he belonged to the nation. As Holland 
says, "for some years preceding his final with- 
drawal from the bar, his practice, it is believed, 
was unsurpassed in its extent and responsibil- 
ity by that of any lawyer in his native State 
and perhaps in the United States." I am loath 
to leave him^a notable character, unjustly de- 
cried by ill-informed or partisan historians. 
There is no doubt that he deliberately sacri- 
ficed his chances for the Presidential nomi- 
nation in 1844 by his letter against the 

91 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 

annexation of Texas, "one of the finest and 
bravest pieces of political courage" as Shepard 
well says, and one which "deserves from 
Americans a long admiration." He was never 
non-committal about the essentials. 

In the early days of the rebellion, he was 
patriotic and staunchly devoted to the cause 
of the Union, although sometimes unjustly 
accused of sympathy with secession. When 
his will was opened they found that it began 
in these words: "I, Martin VanBuren, of the 
Town of Kinderhook, County of Columbia, 
and State of New York, heretofore Governor 
of the State and more recently President of 
the United States, but for the last and happiest 
years of my life a farmer in my native town, 
do make and declare the following to be my 
last will and testament." And so, at the end, 
after an active career of sixty years, during 
which he had attained the highest rank in his 
profession and the most exalted office in the 
nation, he gave his testimony to the emptiness 
of honors and the worthlessness of political 
rewards, and "his dust returned to the earth 
as it was, his spirit to the God who gave it." 



92 



THE SOCIETY FOR THE 
PROMOTION OF THE PUBLIC GOOD 



THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION 
OF THE PUBLIC GOOD. 



Some Remarks at a Dinner of The Netherlands 
Society of Philadelphia, January 23rd, 1906. 



Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Dutchmen: 

WHEN a timid person is suddenly 
and unexpectedly called upon to 
address his helpless fellow beings 
after they have enjoyed a boun- 
tiful repast and have indulged in libations 
calculated to make them ready to swallow 
anything which the post-prandial orator may 
see fit to ladle out to them, and while he is 
trying, with more or less success, to conceal 
his manuscript in his pocket, he is accustomed 
to say that he does not know why he has been 
requested to perform. But really, and without 
any undue humility, I confess that I do not 
know why an obscure individual like myself; 
only a poor lawyer, who never played " bridge" 
and never owned an automobile; who has 

95 



SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION 

never been indicted for anything yet; should 
be asked to address an assemblage of magnates 
like you; such a bevy of brains and beauty; 
such a magnificent array of iridescent intellect 
and personal pulchritude. Far be it from me 
to account for it on the score of family influ- 
ence on the Dinner Committee. But, however 
it may be, I am very proud of the chance to 
behold you in the performance of what I sup- 
pose to be the principal work of your society, 
and to see you, in the words of the poet-- 

"Tho' deep, yet clear; tho' gentle, yet not dull. 
Strong without rage; without overflowing— full." 

May it be, perhaps, that however unworthy 
I am to represent so great a constituency, I am 
here as a delegate from the capital of the col- 
ony of the New Netherlands— pre-eminently 
the home of the Netherlanders, whatever you 
may choose to say or to sing about "the Jersey 
Dutch, the Delaware Dutch and the Dutch of 
Pennsylvania;" from the humble little hamlet 
built at the mouth of the Hudson, called New 
Amsterdam, nobly Dutch in a time when 
Pennsylvania was hopelessly given over to 
Quakers and the rule of the Penn, which we 
are credibly informed is mightier than the 
sword ; on that island of Manna-hatta, rescued 

96 



OF THE PUBLIC GOOD 

from the aborigines by the aid of Mynheer 
Ten Broeck's multitudinous nether garments 
which that bulbous-bottomed burgher peeling 
like an onion, devoted to the good cause in 
the operations of the first recorded American 
land-syndicate to which Ten Broeck contrib- 
uted the breeches and Oloff Van Kortlandt 
the brains—while the Indians represented the 
confiding public. 

New Amsterdam has passed from the rule 
of sturdy hard-koppig Peter Stuyvesant and 
his wooden leg to the rule of the Boss with 
his wooden head; but there are some of the 
descendants of the old stock who still remain 
and who perpetuate the name and the glories 
of good St. Nicholas. And while I have no 
lawful title to speak for them, yet by virtue of 
my ancestry-Jersey Dutch, it is true, on one 
side but New Amsterdam Dutch on the other- 
I may at least on behalf of the New Amster- 
dammers congratulate you on your prosperity 
and extend to you our cordial and fraternal 
greeting. In order to give myself local color 
I stood this morning for half an hour on Wall 
street near William, with my gable-end to the 
street. I would have produced the badge and 
the long clay pipe of the St. Nicholas Society 
as my credentials but at the last dinner I lost 

97 



SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION . 

the one and broke the other in schnapps- 
inspired enthusiasm. I would have submitted 
to you the doughnut, the kruller, and the oily 
koek, the symbols of Dutch good cheer, but 
nobody has made them for me since the days 
of my grandmother Hoffman. So I must ask 
you to receive me on trust, and to let me on 
behalf of your allies on the other side of the 
Hudson, wish you all long life and happiness; 
a never-ending series of dinners like this, 
where men of kindred blood and kindred 
feelings may come together to give to one 
another the grasp of the hand and the word 
of the heart which tell us that we are brothers- 
united by ties not only of ancestry but of 
common aims, of common hopes, and of com- 
mon aspirations. 

To tell the truth, I do not care so much 
about history. You remember that Disraeli 
said about his wife that she was an excellent 
creature, but she never could remember which 
came first, the Greeks or the Romans. Really 
it doesn't matter much to us whether the 
Dutch came first or the French, or the Eng- 
lish. Like the celebrated wingless insect, 
renowned in song, they got there just the 
same. An Italian discovered us originally, 
and the Italians have been discovering us ever 

98 



OF THE PUBLIC GOOD 

since. Columbus came on a Spanish ship, and 
the Spanish discovered us in 1898; and they 
gave us a Philopoena present that a good 
many of us would be glad to return if we 
could. But whether we are Netherlanders or 
Quakers, Dutchmen or Dagoes, Saxon or Nor- 
man or Dane, we are all of us Americans first, 
the rest afterwards. That you may say is a 
commonplace; but if patriotism is a common- 
place, so are life and love and religion. I hope 
the day will never come when we shall be 
ashamed to be patriotic. We believe in this 
country of ours. We are proud of her new 
station among the first of the world powers. 
We are proud of her prosperity, and she was 
never more prosperous than she is today. No 
processions of starving laborers throng our 
streets as they do the streets of London, utter- 
ing their protests against the conditions which 
condemn them to grinding poverty. No, our 
laborers wax fat and kick; and the fatter they 
wax the harder they kick. We are proud too 
of the wonderful influence exercised for the 
world's benefit by that breezy whirlwind of 
intelligent audacity and phenomenal achieve- 
ment, that steam engine in trousers, whom 
John Morley called a combination of St. Paul 
and St. Vitus, whose genius comprehends all 

99 



SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION 

subjects from international reorganizations to 
football and who bears a name that comes 
down to us from the days of Knickerbocker 
and the rule of Wouter Van Twiller ^Theo- 
dore Roosevelt. 

He took aim and down came the Russian 
bear: he showed his teeth and out came the 
Japanese fox. I did all in my power to beat 
him, but you have doubtless observed that my 
efforts were not crowned with what might be 
called brilliant success. Some of us thought 
that, like Secretary Bonaparte, he wanted to 
break up and shatter the old "Constitution." 
But I am convinced we were wrong. I don t 
believe he ever thinks about the Constitution 
at all. I don't believe that Theodore Roose- 
velt would know the Constitution if he met it 
on Chestnut Street or had it up a tree in the 
wilds of Colorado. But if he ever should be- 
come acquainted with it, he will probably cry 
out with his usual energy: "Boys, let us get 
the old thing out, cut away some of its obso- 
lete eighteenth century barnacles and make it 
over to suit the demands and necessities of 
the twentieth." 

Yet, with all our pride, we are not unmind- 
ful of our own faults. You remember, per- 
haps, that when on some occasion the judges 

lOO 



OF THE PUBLIC GOOD 

of England were preparing a memorial to the 
Queen, the draft began: "Conscious as we are 
of our own imperfections/ and one dry old 
jurist-I think it was Lord Bowen-suggested 
as an amendment : "Conscious as we are of one 
another's imperfections." Those of you who 
are familiar with the history of the Nether- 
lands-and I am sure that includes all the 
genial and well-fed burghers whom I see be- 
fore me -remember the great associations 
which were created long ago in that land and 
which have done so much for its people, 
among them the "Society for the Promotion 
of the Public Good," organized in 1784. I 
wish I could pronounce its name, but if you 
will throw a lot of a's and j's and a few as- 
sorted consonants in a shaker, agitate them 
violently for some moments, pour the mixture 
into a cocktail glass and swallow instantly, 
you will get some faint idea of it. And I have 
been wondering what that Society for the 
Promotion of the Public Good might do if it 
should be turned loose in these United States 
of ours and allowed to get its deadly good 
work going among us. 

In the first place -but I do not want to be 
understood as asserting my own views too 
dogmatically; people may differ from me; I 

lOI 



SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION 

have known them to, and yet live; and al- 
though I believe that it abhorred politics, I 
think it might with advantage turn its austere 
but kindly attention towards our rulers, and 
particularly our municipal rulers. The rule of 
graft in our cities has had a severe blow. It 
has had magazine articles written about it 
which ought to hurt it rather badly; but, more 
than that, in many of our cities the men who 
have been put in power by the votes of the 
blind, unthinking and ignorant mass of voters 
which our glorious system of popular suffrage 
permits to control our elections, have had a 
serious shaking up. You Philadelphians have 
had an experience, and once in a while we 
New Yorkers have a similar experience. Once 
in every few years the decent element in the 
community rises, acts, and makes itself felt, 
and then, with a grunt of self-satisfaction, it 
devotes itself to its business and to its amuse- 
ments, and falls asleep while the little yahoos 
of politics who have been skulking in their 
hiding places, waiting until the giant slumbers, 
sneak out again and resume pilfering at the 
old stand. Am I wrong in saying, my brothers, 
that if we were the Society for the Promotion 
of the Public good and had the power, we 
would give to the thrifty man, the substantial 

I02 



OF THE PUBL IC GOOD 

i t — ■ 

man, the taxpayer, the controlling voice in the 
selection of those who administer the affairs 
of our municipalities? I confess I am not san- 
guine, however, that we shall ever come to 
that. Thirty years ago a Commission ap- 
pointed by Governor Tilden in New York 
tried to accomplish that result, and their re- 
port, prepared by such men as James C. Carter, 
William Allen Butler and Simon Sterne, is a 
monument of wisdom. But the legislature 
turned it down-of course they turned it down. 
So that in New York, and in Philadelphia, 
and in Chicago, and in all the crowded cities 
of our land, your money is spent by the men 
chosen by those who believe that the more 
they can get out of you the better it is for 
them, because they pay nothing. They do not 
realize, of course, that by all the laws of polit- 
ical economy they are paying too; and no one 
could ever teach them the truth. But there is 
a power which the grafters fear; an intelligent 
public sentiment, aroused and directed by 
public-spirited men; and all that we can do is 
to keep that sentiment alive, and to remember 
that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. 

Next, that society might possibly deem it 
wise to call a halt in the tendency to whole- 
sale and indiscriminate abuse, particularly the 

103 



SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION 

abuse of the unhappy rich. In these days we 
find that everybody's character is at the mercy 
of reckless pens and of irresponsible tongues. 
To-day it seems that the one great crime is to 
be well-to-do. The outcry is not neW'-it is as 
old as society itself. " He that maketh haste to 
be rich shall not be innocent," say the Proverbs. 
That ought to make John D. Rockefeller tear 
his hair, if he had any. "Law grinds the poor, 
the rich men rule the law," said Oliver Gold- 
smith; and Andrew Carnegie ought to exclude 
Oliver's works from his numberless libraries. 
" Riches grow in hell " said Milton. I fear some 
of our life insurance magnates have assented 
to that dictum and have taken to reading 
"Paradise Lost." But this outcry has become a 
shriek'-a barbaric yawp. And what arouses 
my old Dutch wrath is that the chief yawpers 
are such austere, self-denying, plain-living 
creatures as the altruistic Hearst, with his sim- 
ple, virtuous life and his inherited millions, 
and the buccaneer Lawson, who deluges us 
with the loose expectoration of his speech, 
pays thirty thousand dollars for a carnation, 
and yelps from day to day "Come, my fellow 
paupers, let us despoil the wealthy and over- 
throw the system which gives to brains and 
industry that which should belong to idleness 

104 



OF THE PUBLIC GOOD 

and ignorance." 

I do not mean to defend the men who have 
gained vast fortunes by methods deserving of 
condemnation; but let us not, like thoughtless 
children, condemn without knowledge merely 
because some malicious monkey has managed 
to get hold of a printing press. There is a 
commandment which is reiterated over and 
over again as if it were the only one in the 
Decalogue --"Thou shalt not steal;" but re- 
member that there is another, of just as great 
authority— "Thou shalt not bear false witness 
against thy neighbor." I say that this indis- 
criminate abuse of men who have gained 
wealth is unworthy, is un-American, is dan- 
gerous, leading to lawlessness and thence to 
anarchy. Every one in this free land has a 
right to enjoy the fruit of his own labor, his 
own intelligence, his own capacity. There is 
no law, human or divine, which gives to the 
multitude the sole power to decide what we 
are to do, how we are to behave, or how 
much wealth we shall possess, although our 
demagogues would have the people believe 
it. And they have with them one of the great- 
est powers on earth. 

The night before he sailed for his sorely 
tried land, the astute statesman, Witte, said to 

105 



SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION 

a distinguished citizen of New York, "You 
call this a free country, but it is not free. It is 
not as free as mine. Your people have a mas- 
ter, and that master is more autocratic and in- 
finitely more potent than the Emperor of 
Russia. The newspaper is your ruler." He 
was right. The most dangerous force in our 
country to-day, which does more than any- 
thing else to stir up evil passions, to foster 
abominable heresies, to divide us into classes 
and to set one class against another, is what we 
call the yellow press--a yellow peril in whose 
presence an Oriental invasion shrinks into in- 
significance. You all know what newspapers 
I mean. You all know that I do not refer to 
the decent and honorable newspapers which 
are and always have been one of the greatest 
instruments which divine Providence has em- 
ployed to carry America forward in its grand 
development towards its splendid pre-emi- 
nence among nations. I speak of those daily 
compendiums of falsehood and of crime— 
whose columns are made up of the sickening 
details of robbery, adultery and murder min- 
gled with lies about our fellow-citizens, private 
and public, and assaults upon all that is decent 
and honorable. I do honor to-night to a dis- 
tinguished member of your Society who dared 

io6 



OF THE PUBLIC GOOD 

_ [ I ■ I --..-. 

to defy the power of this Minotaur of modern 
times, and has been pursued and vilified be- 
cause he had the courage to make a manly 
effort to curb the licentiousness of those who 
abuse the power of the press, that great engine 
of civilization. It was an act of bravery which 
rises to the dignity of heroism. You know 
that a dam is a small Indian copper coin of 
trifling value; and the Governor didn't care 
a dam. 

I have a strong impulse to preach a little 
more, but I am going to resist it. Some lady 
once asked Lord Granville if he was not fond 
of going to church, and he replied, "Yes, 
Madam, I have a passion for it, but I restrain 
myself." I am going to restrain myself. One 
reason is that I recall that at a dinner of the 
New England Society some years ago. Senator 
Morgan of Alabama spoke for an hour and 
three-quarters, and when Mr. Choate arose at 
midnight to follow him, the genial gentleman 
who has represented us with such distinction 
at the Court of St. James, began by saying: 
"There are some subjects to which the previous 
speaker has not referred." Another reason is, 
that after dinner one must not be dismal. We 
want to hear pleasant things, and we don't 
want sermons. 

107 



SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION 

Let our Society for the Promotion of the 
Public Good teach us to say good things about 
our fellow-beings and not evil things; to be 
slow to censure others, slow to ascribe to them 
unworthy motives, slow to blame them with- 
out evidence and slow to convict them without 
proof. Our ancestors, the solid, substantial 
burghers of the Netherlands, were men of few 
words but when those words were spoken 
they carried weight. Let us, their descendants, 
give to the heedless, voluble and undiscrimi- 
nating millions, who bestow unhesitating cre- 
dence upon what is printed in red letters at 
the head of the columns of sensational journals, 
an example of cool and careful consideration, 
of wise restraint and of dignified forbearance, 
and we will be deserving of the approval of 
those mighty men of old who look down upon 
us from their lofty seats in the world where 
sooner or later we hope to share their eternal 
Nirvana. 



io8 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 
A Writer of Many Books 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES. 



A Writer of Many Books. 

ri a vainglorious mood I said not long ago 
to a well-dressed and apparently intel- 
ligent gentleman whom I met in the de- 
lightful library room of an accomplished 
lawyer in Washington City, that I had just 
had the privilege of conversing with the ex- 
tremely modern novelist. Mr. Henry James. 
He smiled amiably and remarked airily "Oh, 
the two horsemen fellow f 

The remark was not without significance, 
because it betrayed the fact that my casual 
acquaintance, who might well be presumed to 
represent what is called "the average citizen" 
of this enlightened country; who was fairly 
well educated; who had read enough to know 
of the famous horsemen and of their habitual 
appearance in the opening chapter; who as- 
suredly had skimmed the book-notices in our 
wonderful newspapers; was, after all, more 
distinctly impressed by the writer of half a 
century ago than by the contemporaneous 

III 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

author whose volumes bid fair to rival in 
number those of his namesake --an author 
whose style defies definition and bewilders 
the simple-minded searcher after a good story. 

I confess that I feel towards these subtle 
writers with their involved sentences, their 
clouds of verbiage, and their incomprehen- 
sible wanderings in speculative mysteries 
much as an old Irish court-stenographer did 
when he said to me— "I hate these hypothe- 
cated questions. Give me * Are you a butcher ? 
Yes sir, I am.* " There is a delight about the 
direct and there is often disappointment about 
the indirect. The true lover of fiction revels 
in the directness of Dumas and of Dickens, 
but he usually accepts the intricacies of the 
modern school because he is told that he 
ought to do so or because alone and unaided 
he can discover nothing better in the product 
of the day. 

To my Washington friend I replied, with 
that offensive assumption of superiority which 
marks the man familiar with his encyclopae- 
dia, that the writer of whom he was thinking 
had closed his career and finished the last 
chapter of his life nearly half a century ago 
when Henry James was only seventeen and 
had not yet dreamed of Daisy Miller or fore- 

112 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD IAMBS 

casted the genesis of the two closely printed 
volumes of The Golden Bowl, I discerned the 
truth however that the subject was not inter- 
esting and we changed the topic of conver- 
sation to the coming Charity Ball 

I. 

The "horseman" tag has for many years 
attached itself to G. P. R. James and has done 
much to bring him into ridicule. It is strange 
how such tags preserve immortality, despite 
the fact that they are often unjust and deceiv- 
ing. Few people think of Roger Brooke Taney, 
so long Chief Justice of our highest court, 
without remembering the accusation that he 
said in the Dred Scott case that "the negro has 
no rights which the white man is bound to 
respect," whereas he said no such thing. Many 
believe that Andrew Jackson announced the 
proposition that "to the victor belong the 
spoils," whereas it was Marcy who said that 
"to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy," 
and he was asserting that it was the belief of 
New York politicians. We have no good 
reason to contradict him. Van Buren was rid- 
iculed for saying that "he would tread in the 
footsteps of his illustrious predecessor" but he 
never said it. Illustrations of such popular 

113 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

fallacies might be multiplied almost indefi- 
nitely. These are political examples, and per- 
haps are out of place, but I like to be irrelevant. 
In literature, Bret Harte's parodies, the Rejected 
Addresses^ and the many clever things which 
are contained in Mr. Hamilton's amusing com- 
pilation, show how easy it is to discover a 
mannerism and to attach to an author a label 
which will always identify him. There is only 
one writer who defies parody— the aforesaid 
Henry James, for nobody could ever tell which 
was the original and which the parody. 

Possibly the popularity of the "horseman" 
remark is due in some degree to Thackeray, 
who began "that fatal parody," the burlesque 
"Barbazure, by G. P. R. Jeames Esq. etc." in 
this wise: "It was upon one of those balmy 
evenings of November which are only known 
in the valleys of Languedoc and among the 
mountains of Alsace, that two cavaliers might 
have been perceived by the naked eye thread- 
ing one of the rocky and romantic gorges that 
skirt the mountain land between the Marne 
and the Garonne." Our own John Phoenix in 
his review of the "Life of Joseph Bowers the 
Elder"-- 1 quote from the original edition, and 
not from the one printed by the Caxton Club 
which omits this gem-says of one of Mr. 

114 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

Bowers's supposititious works : *" The following 
smacks, to us. slightly of *Jeems/ *It was on a 
lovely morning in the sweet spring time, when 
two horsemen might have been seen slowly 
descending one of the gentle acclivities that 
environ the picturesque valley of San Diego/ " 
Mr. Edmund Gosse continues the tradition 
when in his Modern English Literature^ he 
tells us of the days when "the cavaliers of G. 
P. R. James were riding down innumerable 
roads;" while Justin McCarthy in the History 
of Our Own Times remarks pleasantly —"Many 
of us can remember, without being too much 
ashamed of the fact, that there were early days 
when Mr. James and his cavaliers and his 
chivalric adventures gave nearly as much de- 
light as Walter Scott could have given to the 
youth of a preceding generation. But Walter 
Scott is with us still, young and old, and poor 
James is gone. His once famous solitary horse- 
man has ridden away into actual solitude, and 
the shades of night have gathered over his 
heroic form." Here we perceive a variation 
from the familiar allusion. The "two horse- 
men" have resolved themselves into a single 
rider. 

While we are speaking of the horsemen, it 
may not be amiss to recall what James thought 

115 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

of them. In 1851 he published a story called 
"The Fate," and in the sixteenth chapter he 
deals with them in a manner quite amusing 
but also quite pathetic. He is talking about 
plagiarism and he wanders into other fields. 
He says: 

"As to repeating one's self, it is no very 
great crime, perhaps, for I never heard that 
robbing Peter to pay Paul was punishable 
under any law or statute, and the multitude of 
offenders in this sense, in all ages, and in all 
circumstances, if not an excuse, is a palliation, 
showing the frailty of human nature, and that 
we are as frail as others--but no more. The 
cause of this self-repetition, probably, is not a 
paucity of ideas, not an infertility of fancy, 
not a want of imagination or invention, but 
like children sent daily to draw water from a 
stream, we get into the habit of dropping our 
buckets into the same immeasurable depth of 
thought exactly at the same place; and though 
it be not exactly the same water as that which 
we drew up the day before it is very similar 
in quality and flavor, a little clearer or a little 
more turbid, as the case may be. 

"Now this dissertation -which may be con- 
sidered as an introduction or preface to the 
second division of my history-- has been 

116 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD IAMBS 

brought about, has had its rise, origin, source, 
in an anxious and careful endeavor to avoid, 
if possible, introducing into this work the two 
solitary horsemen^ one upon a white horse— 
which, by one mode or another, have found 
their way into probably one out of the three 
of all the books I have written; and I need 
hardly tell the reader that the name of these 
books is legion. They are, perhaps, too many: 
but, though I must die, some of them will 
live—I know it, I feel it ; and I must continue 
to write while this spirit is in this body. 

"To say truth, I do not know why I should 
wish to get rid of my two horsemen, espe- 
cially the one on the white horse. Wouver- 
mans always had a white horse in all his 
pictures; and I do not see why I should not 
put my signature, my emblem, my monogram, 
in my paper and ink pictures as well as any 
painter of them all. I am not sure that other 
authors do not do the same thing— that Lytton 
has not always, or very nearly, a philosophiz- 
ing libertine— Dickens, a very charming young 
girl, with dear little pockets; and Lever a bold 
dragoon. Nevertheless, upon my life, if I can 
help it, we will not have in this work the two 
horsemen and the white horse; albeit, in after 
times-when my name is placed with Homer 

117 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

and Shakespeare, or in any other more likely 
position —there may arise serious and acrimo- 
nious disputes as to the real authorship of the 
book, from its wanting my own peculiar and 
distinctive mark and characteristic. 

"But here, while writing about plagiarism, I 
have been myself a plagiary; and it shall not 
remain without acknowledgment, having suf- 
fered somewhat in that sort myself. Here, my 
excellent friend, Leigh Hunt, soul of mild good- 
ness, honest truth, and gentle brightness! I 
acknowledge that I stole from you the defen- 
sive image of Wouverman's white horse, 
which you incautiously put within my reach, 
on one bright night of long, dreamy conver- 
sation, when our ideas of many things, wide 
as the poles asunder, met suddenly without 
clashing, or produced but a cool, quiet spark-as 
the white stones which children rub together 
in dark corners emit a soft phosphorescent 
gleam, that serves but to light their little 
noses." ^ 

I hold no brief for James. I cannot assert 

1 As a matter of curiosity, I examined the twenty-one novels 
composing the ** Revised Edition" of 1844-1849 to ascertain just 
how many introduced the horseman or horsemen in the first chap- 
ter. Seven disclose them; in eight they are absent; in four, the 
horsemen are **a party;" in two, they appear in the second 
chapter, the first being merely introductory. 

ii8 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

truthfully that I am particularly well acquainted 
with more than two or three of his numerous 
books, although I remember with delight the 
perusal of some of them when I was a boy, 
reading for the story alone. But I am confi- 
dent that he had his merits, and that much of 
the abuse showered upon him by critics has 
been undeserved; that he was a careful and 
conscientious writer, whose novels are fit to 
be read, and that while he may no longer be 
ranked among "the best sellers," he deserves a 
high place of honor among those who have 
entertained, amused and instructed their fel- 
low men. It is only about two years ago that 
the Routledges of London considered it wise 
to begin the new career of their house by re- 
issuing in twenty-five volumes the historical 
novels, and cheaper reproductions are widely 
circulated. In a recent number of a New York 
magazine the editor says that "the fact is that 
James has always had a big public of his 
own'-'the public in fact that does not consult 
the 'Dictionary of National Biography'"— re- 
ferring to the disparaging article in the Dic- 
tionary about which I will have something to 
say later on. There are authors who are always 
praised by the critics but ignored by the pro- 
letariat of readers; there are authors whom 

119 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

the critics affect to despise but who have 
many readers whose judgments are not em- 
balmed in print. James seems to belong to the 
last-mentioned class. Yet few are acquainted 
with the man himself, and I have thought that 
it might not be amiss to give a short account 
of him, referring to the estimates of his char- 
acter and ability by those of his own time and 
also to some autograph letters of his which 
are in my possession and which have not 
been published. 

11. 

The details of his life are not very well 
known; it was not a stirring or an eventful 
one. It was the life of a quiet, dignified and 
unostentatious man of letters, unmarked by 
fierce controversies and wholly devoid of 
domestic troubles. If his reputation has not 
long survived him among the critical it is be- 
cause of a law of literature which Mr. Brander 
Matthews says is inexorable and universal. 
The man who has the gift of story telling and 
nothing else, who is devoid of humor, who 
does not possess the power of making char- 
acter, who is a "spinner of yarns" only, has no 
staying power, and "however immense his 
immediate popularity may be, he sinks into 

I20 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

oblivion almost as soon as he ceases to pro- 
duce."^ James seems to have had only in a 
small degree "the power of making character," 
and although he had a sense of humor, it 
manifests itself in his novels only in a mildly 
unobtrusive way. 

George Payne Rainsford James was born in 
George Street, Hanover Square, London, on 
August 9th, 1799. His father was a physician 
who had seen service in the navy and was in 
America during the Revolution, serving in 
Benedict Arnold's descent on Connecticut. 
The son of the novelist, who is still living in 
Wisconsin, tells me that his grandfather (as 
he hinted) shot a man with his own hands to 
stop the atrocities of the siege in which Led- 
yard fell. The physician was also in the vessel 
which brought Rodney the news of De Grasse 
and enabled him to win the great naval victory 
which assisted England to make peace credit- 
ably. His paternal grandfather was Dr. Robert 
James, whose "powders" for curing fevers en- 
joyed great celebrity at one time, ^ but his chief 
title to fame is that he was admired by Samuel 

1 Brander Matthews: Aspects of Fiction, 153. 

2 They are said to have caused the death of Oliver Goldsmith, 
and pamphlets were published on the subject. Foster's Oliver 
Goldsmith, II. 461-463. 

121 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD I AMES 

Johnson who said of him, "no man brings more 
mind to his profession." ^ I regret that there is 
a cruel insinuation by the great personage 
which impHes that Doctor Robert was not 
sober for twenty years, but there is some doubt 
whether Johnson was really referring to 
James. ^ Those were days of free indulgence, 
and much may be pardoned; at all events, no 
one could ever accuse the grandson of such 
an offence. 

Young George attended the school of the 
Reverend William Carmalt at Putney, but he 
was not fortunate enough to have the advan- 
tage of a university education, which, despite 
the sneers of those who never attended a uni- 
versity, is an important element in the life of 
any man who devotes himself to literature. It 
is a great corrective, and those who regard 
the subject from a point of view wholly utili- 
tarian do not comprehend in the least degree 
what is meant by it. James soon developed a 
fondness for the study of languages, not only 
what are called "the classics," but of Persian 
and Arabic although he says he "sadly failed 
in mastering Arabic." This taste of his may 

1 Boswell (Geo. Birkbeck Hill's Edition), I. 183. 

2 Id., III. 442. 

122 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

account in part for his extensive vocabulary, 
and it may be that his diffuseness, so much 
criticised, was due in some degree to his ready 
command of an unusual number of words. In 
his younger days, he studied medicine, as 
might have been expected, but his inclination 
was in a different direction. He also wanted 
to go into the navy, but says Mr. C. L. James, 
"his father, who had a sailor's experience and 
manners, said, *you may go into the army if 
you like-it's the life of a dog; but the navy is 

the life of a d d dog, and you shant try it.' " 

He did accordingly go into the army for a 
short time during the "One Hundred Days," 
and was wounded in one of the slight actions 
which followed Waterloo; but he never rose 
beyond the rank of lieutenant. His son writes : 
"The British and Prussian forces were dis- 
posed all along the frontier to guard every 
point, and Wellington, with whom my father 
was acquainted, did not like the arrange- 
ment-it was Blucher's. When Napoleon 
crossed the Sambre at Charlevoi, the Duke 
saw his purpose of taking Quatre Bras, be- 
tween the English and Prussians, so he sent 
word to all his own detachments to fall 
in, ^running as to a fire.' * * * My father's 
company was among those too late for the 

123 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFQRD JAMES 

great battle. I have heard him tell how the 
cuirassiers lay piled up, men and horses, to 
the tops of lofty hedges. * * * My father 
also said that he saw a dead cuirassier behind 
our lines, showing there must have been a 
time when they actually pierced the allied 
centre. When he was on the field they were 
bringing in French prisoners, who would have 
been massacred by the Prussians but that 
English soldiers guarded them. Many years 
afterwards the Duke of Wellington said to 
my father, in his abrupt way, *You were at 
Waterloo, I think?' 'No,' he replied, *I am 
sorry to say." *Why sorry to say,' rejoined 
Wellington, *if you had been there, you might 
not have been here.' Another of his anecdotes 
about the Duke is that just after Waterloo, 
where it is well known that a great part of the 
allied army was wholly routed, some officers 
were talking about who *ran,' when Welling- 
ton, who had been quietly listening to these 
unhopeful personalities, cut in thus : 'Run ! who 
wouldn't have run under a fire like that ? I am 
sure I should --if I had known any place to 
run to.' " 

One incident in his army life is of interest. 
Some thirty years ago Mr. Maunsell B. Field, a 
gentleman whose title to fame is somewhat 

124 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD IAMBS 

dubious, published a book called "Memories 
of Many Men." He knew James well, and 
collaborated with him in one of his books— 
"Adrian, or the Clouds of the Mind." Mr. 
Field says, after mentioning an alleged fact 
which is not a fact, viz : that James was taken 
prisoner before the battle of Waterloo and 
detained until after the battle, "The incident 
which occurred during his confinement there 
cast a gloom upon the rest of his life. For 
some cause which he never explained to me, 
he became engaged in a duel with a French 
officer. He escaped unhurt himself, but 
wounded his adversary who died, after lin- 
gering for months. I have still in my posses- 
sion the old-fashioned pistols with which this 
duel was fought, which my deceased friend 
presented to me at the time of our early ac- 
quaintance." ^ Field's story is made up in a 
ridiculously inaccurate way. James was not 
captured before Waterloo, or after it, for that 
matter. During his later travels he became 
involved in a difficulty with a French officer 
and found himself compelled, according to the 
absurd practice of the time, to fight a duel 
with him. The Frenchman was not killed, but 

1 Memories: by M. B. Field p. 188— Harpers, 1874. 

125 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

only wounded in the arm, and the duel was 
fought with swords, not with pistols! The 
truth is, that after the sword-duel, James was 
challenged to fight again with pistols. Mr. C. 
L James writes me thus: "It made him (G. P. 
R. James) very angry; and. being a good shot 
then, he felt confident of the result if he should 
accept but said he would put the point of 
honor to the French officer's regiment. They 
replied by inviting him to dine at the mess. 
On receiving this message, he took up his pis- 
tols which were ready, loaded, saying *then 
we shall have no use for these,' and at that 
moment one of them went off, sending the 
bullet through the floor close to his foot, 
though he felt sure they were not cocked." 
Mr. Field undoubtedly meant to tell the truth, 
but his reminiscences cannot be relied upon 
in regard to James or to any one else. 

As a lad of seventeen he wrote a number 
of sketches, afterwards published under the 
title of "A String of Pearls," which were rather 
free translations from the oriental tales he had 
studied so fondly. ^ He travelled extensively 
for those times, visiting France and Spain soon 

1 Allibone gives the date of publication as 1849; but it must 
have been published in some form prior to May 17, 1833. See 
post, page 200. 

126 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

after the abdication of Napoleon. These early 
travels and adventures supplied him with the 
idea of Morley Ernst ein. He became acquaint- 
ed with Cuvier and other men of eminence, 
and it is gratifying to Americans to know that 
Washington Irving liked him and gave him 
encouragement. It has been said that his first 
work was the Life of Edward the Black Prince ^ 
produced in 1822, but one of my letters, writ- 
ten in 1835, indicates that it was not produced 
earlier than 1836. The son thinks it must 
have been written before 1830. He had a 
disposition to enter political life, but he aban- 
doned the idea in 1827. He was a mild Tory. 
His ambition was in the direction of a diplo- 
matic career. His father had some influence 
with Lord Liverpool, who offered him the 
post of Secretary to an Embassy to China, ^ 
a temporary appointment only, and one which 
promised no preferment. It was declined, and 
a week later Lord Liverpool died suddenly. 

In 1828 he married the daughter of Hono- 
ratus Leigh Thomas, an eminent physician of 
that day. She survived her husband exactly 
thirty-one years, dying at Eau Claire, Wiscon- 
sin, on June 9th, 1891. The assertion made 
in some accounts of him that James married in 
the United States is wholly untrue. After the 

127 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

marriage, they lived in France, Italy and Scot- 
land. 

In 1825 he wrote his first novel, Richelieu^ 
which was not published until 1829. Regarded 
by many as the best of his novels, it is an ex- 
cellent example of his strength and of his 
weakness. It deals with elementary emotions, 
and makes but slight attempts to portray char- 
acter except in the simplest and most obvious 
way. Although it bears the name of the great 
Cardinal, it might as well have been called 
"Louis XIII.," or "Chavigni," or "The Count de 
Blenau," for Richelieu himself appears but 
seldom on the scene and is not the hero or 
the central figure. The narrative runs briskly 
on, plentifully seasoned with deeds of daring 
and hair-breadth escapes, culminating in the 
familiar climax of the almost miraculous ar- 
rival of a pardon when the hero has bared 
his neck to receive the axe of the executioner. 
It is evident from the outset that the noble- 
man whose fortunes are the subject of the 
story and the conventional lady of his love 
will marry and "be happy ever after." The 
abundant historical and antiquarian padding 
is admirably devised and executed, well placed 
and never tiresome. The tale is skilfully con- 
structed and if it teaches any lesson, it is that 

128 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

of courage, truth, honor and loyalty. Our 
modern "historical novels" are in many re- 
spects distinctly inferior to Richelieu. Singu- 
larly enough, he did not include it in the 
revised edition of his Works. 

After reading Richelieu^ Sir Waher Scott 
advised him to adopt literature as a profes- 
sion, and as he imitated Scott, the value of the 
advice is not to be underestimated. As Mr. 
Field's story goes, James had kept the manu- 
script concealed from his father, but he man- 
aged to get an introduction to Scott, who 
promised to give him his opinion. After six 
months, no news came from Scotland. James 
was riding one day in Bond Street, when, his 
horse shying, his carriage was pressed against 
another. The occupant of the other carriage 
was Scott, and he invited James to call upon 
him. To his surprise and delight, Scott praised 
the book highly, and wrote his opinion, which 
enabled the lucky author to find a publisher, 
to whom he sold the copyright for a song. In 
his General Preface to the Works (i 844-1 849) 
James himself gives a very different account 
of the matter. He says that a friend showed 
Sir Walter one volume of a romance written 
long before, and he himself sent a letter to 
Scott asking advice in regard to persevering 

129 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

in a literary career. Some months passed, and 
James "felt somewhat mortified and a good 
deal grieved" at receiving no response, but 
one day, on returning from the country to 
London, he found a packet on his table con- 
taining the volume and a note. "The opinion 
expressed in that note," adds James, "was more 
favourable than I had ever expected, and cer- 
tainly more favourable than I deserved; for Sir 
Walter was one of the most lenient of critics, 
especially to the young. However, it told me 
to persevere, and I did so." ^ Irving and Scott 
united in encouraging him to produce his next 
novel, Darnleyy with another great Cardinal 
as a principal character. Darnley was sketched 
and drafted at Montreuil-sur-Mer in Decem- 
ber, 1828, and was completed in a few months. 
It is still popular with readers of fiction and 
has much of the charm which pervades its 
predecessor. James lived for a time at Evreux, 
and DeVOrme^ written there in 1829, ap- 
peared in 1830. Philip Augustus was pro- 
duced in less than seven weeks, and was 
published in 1831. Under WiUiam IV. he was 
appointed Historiographer Royal, and pub- 
lished several pamphlets officially. ^ In 1842 

1 Works Vol. I. "The Gipsey," p. vii. 

3 Dictionary of National Biography, xxix., 209-210. 

130 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD IAMBS 

he lived at Walmer, and was frequently a 
guest of the Duke of Wellington at Walmer 
Castle -a fact jocosely mentioned in the Life 
of Charles Lever ^ where it is recorded that 
Lever said to McGlashan that he must beware 
of James, who had become dangerous from 
irritation, but suggested that as James had been 
dining twice a week with the Duke/ he had 
eaten himself into a more than ordinary bili- 
ous temper." ^ In 1845 he went to Germany, 
partly for recreation and partly to obtain in- 
formation to be used in the History of Richard 
Cceur de Lion^ upon which he was then en- 
gaged. The illness of his children detained 
him for a year; and at Karlsruhe and Baden- 
Baden he wrote Heidelberg and the Castle of 
Ehrenstein, On his return to England he 
lived for some time near Farnham, Surrey, 
where he wrote voluminously. He was accus- 
tomed to rise at five in the morning, to write 
with his own hand until nine, and later in the 
day to dictate to an amanuensis, walking to 
and fro meanwhile. 

Towards 1850 he decided to leave England 
and go to America. 

His original intention was to settle in Can- 

1 Fitzpatrlck's Life of Lever, II.— 21. 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

ada. He had met with severe pecuniary re- 
verses. The collected edition of his works 
was illustrated with steel engravings, but after 
a few volumes had appeared the publisher 
failed. The engraver sued James as a partner 
in the enterprise, was successful, and poor 
James had to pay several thousand pounds. In 
this plight he sought his friend, the Duke of 
Northumberland, who endeavored to dissuade 
him from leaving England and offered him a 
signed check, with the amount left blank, ask- 
ing him to accept it and fill the blank himself. 
To his credit, James declined the generous gift. ^ 
When he reached New York in July, 1850, 
he took lodgings in the old New York Hotel. 
He had many letters of introduction, including 
one to Horace Greeley, who, he said, had "the 
head of a Socrates and the face of a baby." 
Hotel life proving unsatisfactory, he rented 
Charles Astor Bristed's house at Hell Gate, 
opposite Astoria. Of his many troubles in 
getting into his new home, he wrote an amus- 
ing account in verse which Mr. Field prints. ^ 
Field tells a story of a wealthy man of New 
York who was introduced to James, and re- 

1 This is all according to Field, and may be taken for what 
it is worth. 

2 Memoirs, 191-195. 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

marked that he was a great admirer of the 
works, that he believed he had read all that 
were published, and that there was one "which 
he vastly preferred to all the others." "And 
which is that?" asked James. "The Last Days 
of Pompeii," was the answer. "That is Bui- 
wer's, not mine," replied the mortified novelist. 
He also tells of a lady who found in a village 
library what she supposed to be a copy of an 
English edition of one of James's novels in two 
volumes. She read them with much enjoy- 
ment, and did not discover until she had fin- 
ished them, that she had been reading the first 
volume of one and the second volume of 
another. With admirable tact and discretion 
Field told this to James, and says "he winced 
under it." 

In 1 85 1 he hired a furnished house at Stock- 
bridge, Massachusetts, and later he bought 
property there, making some laudable efforts 
at farming. Mr. Field says: 

"In the meantime he was also industriously 
pegging away at book-making, although to 
the casual observer he appeared to be the 
least occupied man in the place. He never 
did any literary work after eleven o'clock a. m. 
until evening. He was not accustomed to 
put his own hand to paper, when composing, 

133 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

but always employed an amanuensis. At this 
time he had in his service in that capacity the 
brother of an Irish baronet, who spoke and 
wrote English, French, German and Italian, 
and whom I had procured for him at the 
modest stipend of five dollars a week. When 
James was dictating, he always kept a paper 
of snuff upon the table on which his secretary 
wrote, and he would stride up and down the 
room, stopping every few minutes for a fresh 
supply of the titillating powder. He never 
looked at the manuscript, or made any correc- 
tions except upon proof-sheets." 

During that summer James and Field pro- 
duced the book to which reference has been 
made, finishing it in five weeks. Notwith- 
standing Fields assertion that "it was very 
kindly received by the critics," it does not ap- 
pear to have enjoyed any marked success. 

In 1852 he was appointed British Consul at 
Norfolk, Virginia. He was not contented there, 
as we may see from his letters; but he received 
many kindnesses, and on the last night he 
spent in the United States he spoke to Field of 
the Virginians, as "a warm-hearted people." 
His health suffered and his spirits also; the 
yellow fever raged in the city and caused him 
great trouble and anxiety. While in the United 

134 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

States he wrote Ticonderogay The Old Domin- 
iouy and other novels; his fertile pen was al- 
ways busy. His latest work was The Cavalier , 
published in 1859. ^^ 1856 the Consulate 
was removed to Richmond. At his earnest 
request he was transferred from Virginia in 
September, 1858, and was appointed Consul 
General at Venice, where it was hoped that 
his health would improve. The war between 
France and Austria soon broke out, his labors 
and anxieties were increased and in April, 
i860, his illness became serious. On June 9, 
i860, he died of an apoplectic stroke, "an utter 
break up of mind preceding the end," as Lever 
wrote. He was buried in Venice-some ac- 
counts say in the Lido cemetery, but the mon- 
ument, erected by the English residents in 
Venice, is in the Protestant portion of the 
cemetery of St. Michele, which is on an island 
not far from the Lido. Laurence Hutton, in 
his Literary Landmarks of Venice ^ refers to a 
vague tradition among the older alien resi- 
dents that he was buried in the Lido, where, 
Hutton says, there are a few very ancient 
stones and monuments marking the graves of 
foreign visitors to Venice, none of them seem- 
ing to be of a later date than the middle of the 
eighteenth century. But Sir Francis Vincent, 

135 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

the last British Ambassador to the Venetian 
Republic, is buried there. Mr. Hutton adds 
that the stone in St. Michele is "a tablet black- 
ened by time, broken and hardly decipherable;" 
but when I saw it in the summer of 1906 it was 
only slightly discolored, and not broken at all. 
It showed no evidence of restoration, and was 
blackened only as much as might be expected 
of a stone forty-five years old in a climate like 
that of Venice. The epitaph, written by 
Walter Savage Landor, is absolutely distinct 
and easily read: 

"George Payne Rainford James. 

British Consul General in the Adriatic. 

Died in Venice, on the 9th day of June, i860, 

His merits as a writer are known wherever 
the English language is, and as a man they rest 
on the hearts of many. 

A few friends have erected this humble and 
perishable monument." 

Hutton attempts to give the epitaph in 
full but makes an unaccountable error in sub- 
stituting "heads" for "hearts." It is another 
illustration of the ill will of the fates that 
even on his tombstone his name should be 
engraved incorrectly. ^ Rainford^ is doubt- 
Jes? the mistake of the Italian who prepared 

136 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

the monument.^ 

Mr. J. A. Hamilton, in the Dictionary of 
National Biography^ says: "An epitaph, in 
terms of somewhat extravagant eulogy, was 
written by Walter Savage Landor." The epi- 
taph, which I copied word for word, scarcely 
deserves Mr. Hamilton's censure. Surely there 
is nothing extravagant about it. I regret that in 
such a valuable work as the Dictionary y the 
account of James is so slight, perfunctory, and 
in many respects inaccurate. It could have 
been made much better, and it is in marked 
contrast with most of the biographical sketches 
included in that admirable compendium. 

III. 

Mr. Hamilton sums up in a careless and in- 
different way the 'literary career of James. 
"Flimsy and melodramatic as James's romances 
are, they were highly popular. The historical 
setting is for the most part laboriously accu- 
rate, and though the characters are without 
life, the moral tone is irreproachable; there is 
a pleasant spice of adventure about the plots, 
and the style is clear and correct. The writer's 

1 It is said, but on rather dubious authority, that he was 
sometimes called "George Prince Regent James," and that 
many believed it to be his real name. 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

grandiloquence and artificiality are cleverly 
parodied by Thackeray in *Barbazure, by G. 
P. R. Jeames, Esq., etc./ in 'Novels by Eminent 
Hands/ and the conventional sameness of the 
opening of his novels, *so admirable for terse- 
ness/ is effectively burlesqued in *The Book 
of Snobs/ chap. ii. and xvi." It is the old story: 
Thackeray made fun of him, and so— away 
with himl Yet there was a time when every- 
body read James and few read Thackeray. I 
venture to assert that the romances are neither 
flimsy nor melodramatic, unless Scott's roman- 
ces are flimsy and melodramatic. I find no 
grandiloquence in them. 

Probably the best and most authoritative 
sketch of his life is contained in the preface 
which he wrote for the collected edition of 
his novels, published, in twenty-one volumes, 
in 1 844-1 849. Of course this includes no 
account of the last ten years of his career. The 
number of volumes he gave to the world was 
enormous, as may be seen from the list of his 
works compiled from the Dictionary and from 
Allibone's laboriously minute record. They 
tell of his untiring industry; evidently he loved 
to write for the sake of writing. His books 
brought him a goodly income, but he was 
always poor; careless about his expenditure; 

138 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

ever ready and willing to give aid to those 
who needed it, particularly to his literary 
brethren; a noble, honest Christian gentleman, 
devoid of selfishness: a good husband and 
father, simple and direct in his ways, char- 
itable, open-hearted, deserving of the esteem 
and affection of all who knew him. It was 
said of him by a writer who deplored "the 
fatal facility" of the novels, that "there is a soul 
of true goodness in them-no maudlin affecta- 
tion of virtue, but a manly rectitude of aim 
which they derive directly from the heart of 
the writer. His enthusiastic nature is visibly 
impressed upon his productions. They are full 
of his own frank and generous impulses— 
impulses so honorable to him in private life. 
Out of his books, there is no man more sin- 
cerely beloved. Had he not even been a dis- 
tinguished author, his active sympathy in the 
cause of letters would have secured to him the 
attachment and respect of his contemporaries." 
His activity was by no means limited to the 
field of prose fiction. In poetry, he produced 
TheRuined City in iS28;^lanche of Navarre, 
a five-act play, in 1839, ^^^ Camaralzamariy 
a "fairy drama" in three acts, in 1848. My 
"first edition" of Blanche of Navarre, a pam- 
phlet of ninety- eight pages, with a dedication 

139 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD )AMES 

to Talfourd-until to -day, after an existence of 
sixty- six years, unvexed by the paper-knife, 
and in that "unopened" condition so dear to 
the heart of a collector- does not disclose any 
good reason for its creation. The finale of 
Act III. is an example of its "lofty poetic tone"- 

"Don John (pointing to the gallery). 
We have spectators there! A lady points! 
Let us go succour her! 

Don Ferdinand (stopping him). 
Nay, I beseech! 
Most likely 'tis my sister! -Foolish child! 
She has maids there enow— Lo, they are gone! 
We'll close the night with wine." 
[ The drop scene descends to dumb-show, '\ 

So we might suppose. The hospitable sug- 
gestion of Don Ferdinand has a flavor of reck- 
less rioting about it which brings to mind the 
one time favorite amusement of a Tammany 
Hall leader— "opening wine." 

It is only fair to let him tell his own story 
about his literary fecundity. He says: 

"Before I close my present task, I may be 
permitted to say a few words in regard to the 
observations which are uniformly made upon 
every author who writes rapidly and often. I 
will not repeat the frequently noticed fact, 

140 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD )AMES 

that the best writers have generally been the 
most voluminous; for I must contend that 
neither the number of an author's works, nor 
the rapidity with which they are produced, 
affords any criterion whatsoever by which to 
judge of their merit. They may be numerous 
and excellent, like those of Voltaire, Scott, 
Dryden, Vega, Boccacio and others; they may 
be rapidly written, and yet accurate, like the 
great work of Fenelon, and they may be quite 
the reverse. * * * I may mention, in my 
own case, a few circumstances which may 
account for the number and rapidity of my 
works. In the first place, all the materials for 
the tales I have written, and for many more 
than I ever shall write, were collected long 
before this idea of entering upon a literary 
career ever crossed my mind. In the next 
place, I am an early riser, and any one who 
has that habit must know that it is a grand 
secret for getting through twice as much as 
lazier men can perform. Again, I write and 
read during some portion of every day, except 
when I am travelling, and even then if possi^ 
ble. I need not point out, that regular appli- 
cation in literary, as well as all other kinds of 
labour, will effect results which no desultory 
efforts, however energetic, can obtain. Then. 

141 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

again, the habit of dictating instead of writing 
with my own hand, which I first attempted at 
the suggestion of Sir Walter Scott, relieves me 
of the manual labour which many authors 
have to undergo, leaves the mind clear and 
free to act, and affords facilities inconceivable 
to those who have not tried, or, having tried, 
have not been able to attain it." ^ 

I am not convinced that the custom of dic- 
tating is one which should be observed by an 
author who aims at the highest excellence. 

In the accounts of his life and his work there 
are many discrepancies and contradictions. 
For example Mr. Allibone-who is not alto- 
gether trustworthy in details— tells us that his 
first book was A Life of Edward The Black 
Prince J published in 1822; but the Dictionary 
of National "Biography ascribes that publica- 
tion to the year 1836, and the ^Dictionary is 
undoubtedly right, for he said in 1835 "The 
Black Prince comes on but slowly." ^ The 
Dictionary says that as "historiographer royal" 
—a sonorous title which must have afforded 
great pleasure to its bearer^-he published in 
1839 a History of the United States Boundary 
Question^ but Mr. Allibone insists that it was 

1 Works, Vol. I. xlv. 

2 Letter to Cunningham, post, page 203. 

142 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

not his production. I have an autograph letter 
of James which, I think, warrants the belief 
that AUibone is wrong. The letter is a good 
example of his serious epistolary style. 

"Fair Oak Lodge, Petersfield 
Hants, 4th November, 1837. 
My Lord: 

A few months previous to the death of his 
late Majesty, he was pleased to appoint me 
Historiographer in ordinary for England into 
which office I was duly sworn. On the acces- 
sion of Her Majesty our present Queen, al- 
though I was informed that the office did not 
necessarily lapse on the death of the monarch 
who conferred it, I applied to Her Majesty 
through her Lord Chamberlain for her gra- 
cious confirmation of the honor her Royal 
Uncle had conferred upon me. Many months 
have now elapsed even since Lord Conyng- 
ham did me the honor of writing to inform 
me that the time had not then arrived for Her 
Majesty to take into consideration that class 
of offices and I am induced in consequence to 
apply directly to your Lordship as I under- 
stand that your department of the government 
embraces such matters. I should have waited 
longer ere I thus intruded upon your valuable 

143 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFQRD ]AMES 

time but that I am about to publish a new His- 
torical work of some importance in the title 
to which must appear whether I am or am not 
still Historiographer. If I am to understand 
by the silence which has been maintained upon 
the subject that it is Her Majesty's determina- 
tion to deprive me of the office which her 
royal uncle conferred I must bow to her gra- 
cious pleasure and neither my station in society, 
my fortune, or my views of what is right re- 
quire or permit me to say one word to alter 
such a resolution. Should that determination 
however not have been formed allow me to 
submit to your Lordship that to dismiss me 
from a post to which I was so lately appointed 
is to cast a stigma of which I am not deserving. 
If I have ever written anything that is calcu- 
lated to injure society; if I have ever debased 
my pen to pander to bad appetites of any 
kind ; if I have ever failed to dedicate its efforts 
to the promotion of truth, virtue, and honor, 
not only let the dismissal be made public but 
the cause of that stigma be assigned. But if on 
the contrary to have done my best, and that 
perhaps with more reputation than my writ- 
ings merit, to promote all that is good and 
noble; if to have bestowed vast labour, anx- 
ious research, valuable time, and many hun- 

144 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

dreds of pounds for which I can hope no 
return on such works as the History of Char- 
lemagne, the History of Edward the Black 
Prince, the History of Chivalry, and my letters 
to Lord Brougham on the system of Education 
in the higher German States—if these circum- 
stances afford any claim to honor or distinc- 
tion, I think in my case they may stand in the 
way of an act which I cannot yet make up my 
mind to believe that Her Majesty's present 
ministers would advise. I have given up the 
expectation indeed that a fair share of honors 
and distinctions-or in fact any share at all'- 
should be bestowed upon literary men in this 
country, even when a high education, upright 
conduct, and a fortune not ill employed com- 
bine with literary reputation: but I still trust 
that that which has been given will not be 
taken away. 

I have now to apologize, my Lord—and I 
feel that an apology is very necessary— for ad- 
dressing this letter to your private house; but 
your kindness and courtesy when, as a result 
of some communications between my friend 
Sir David Brewster and myself, I addressed 
you on the state of literature in England have 
encouraged me to trespass upon you in some 
manner. 

145 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

I have the honor to be, my Lord, your Lord- 
ship's most obedient servant. 

G. P. R. James." 

I have not been able to discover what effect 
this letter had, but it is evident that the " His- 
torical work" was the pamphlet on the Bound- 
ary Question as I do not find a record of any 
other "historiographicar work to which the 
language of the letter is applicable. 

The Dictionary of National biography cred- 
its James with Memoirs of Celebrated Women 
(three volumes, 1837), but AUibone says that 
he had no share in it, further than writing a 
preface or "something of that kind." The 
Dictionary inrXhet informs us that "about 1850 
he was appointed British Consul for Massa- 
chusetts"— an impossible office— and that he 
was transferred to Norfolk, Virginia, 1852, 
becoming Consul General at Venice in 1856. 
Allibone makes him Consul at Richmond, 
Virginia, in 1 8 5 2 and Consul General at Venice 
in September, 1858. His friend Hall places 
him at Norfolk in 1852 and in Venice in 1859. 
Appleton's Cyclopcedia follows Allibone as to 
dates, but very properly ignores Richmond in 
favor of Norfolk. The EncyclopcEdia ^ritan- 
nica says that Irving encouraged him to pro- 

146 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

duce the Life of the Black Prince in 1822 (an 
evident error), sends him as ** Consul to Rich- 
mond" in 1852 and transfers him to Venice in 
September, 1858. The truth is that he went 
to Norfolk in 1852, to Richmond in 1856, and 
to Venice in 1858. As we have seen, even the 
place of his interment is not without uncer- 
tainty. These variances in regard to the facts 
of his life are due to the comparative neglect 
which has befallen his memory. Perhaps they 
are not of much importance. Although he had 
numerous friends and acquaintances, none of 
them, except Mr. S. C. Hall and Maunsell B. 
Field, left anything approaching an account 
of his life, and even Mr. HalFs reminiscences 
are meagre and cursory, while Mr. Field's are 
largely apocryphal. 

He surely possessed the art of making friends. 
Before his marriage he knew not only Scott 
and Irving, but Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Walter 
Savage Landor, his friendship with Hunt and 
Landor continuing to the end of his life. Prob- 
ably he never saw Shelley, but he admired 
greatly the writings of that radical enthusiast. 
He knew Thackeray, but did not like him; 
perhaps the parody galled him. He detested 
the brilliant, showy, shallow Count D'Orsay. 
His son says that he never heard his father 

147 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

speak of Dickens as if they had met. ^ "He 
fully acknowledged the power and versatility 
of Dickens' works, but there was something 
in them which did not please him. He had 
detected, if it is there-suspected, if it is not- 
the essential vulgarity which this master of 
pathos and humor is said to have shown those 
who came in personal contact with him." He 
had some acquaintance with Bulwer-Lytton. 
"It is odd," remarks the younger James, "but 
his tone towards this eminent author, who at 
some points {Richelieu and the historic novels) 
approached near enough his own line for 
rivalry, was rather one of compassion. He 
knew the personal and domestic sorrows of 
one whom unfriendly critics accused of soul- 
less dandyism; and he seemed to have a sort of 
friendly feeling for that partially unsuccessful 
ambition which made the author of books as 
unlike as Pelham and Pausonias attempt so 
many things without reaching the highest rank 
in any." The Duke of Northumberland, the 
Duke of Wellington, Charles Lever, Thomas 
Campbell, and Allan Cunningham, were also 
friends. In America, he was known and well 
received by President Pierce, Hawthorne, 

1 Letter of C. L. James. 

148 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

Longfellow, Charles Sumner, Farragut, Barron, 
Henry A. Wise, Roger A. Pryor, John Tyler, 
Sumner, Winder, General Scott, Edward 
Everett, Marcy, Caleb Gushing and a host of 
others. His gentle, modest nature, his culti- 
vated taste, and his frank, pleasant ways seem 
to have attracted all who came within the com- 
pass of his friendship. He had much conver- 
sation with Marcy. Each had some idea of 
sounding the other diplomatically; both took 
snuff and neither proposed to be sounded. 
When James asked Marcy something which 
the latter did not choose to answer, Marcy 
would ask him for a pinch of snuff, and he 
readily perceived that this evasion was as good 
for two as for one. 

Mr. Field says of him: "If he was sometimes 
a tedious writer, he was always the best story- 
teller that I ever listened to. He had known 
almost everybody in his own country, and he 
never forgot anything. The literary anecdotes 
alone which I have heard him relate would 
suffice to fill an ordinary volume. He was a 
big-hearted man, too-tender, merciful, and full 
of religious sentiment; a good husband, a de- 
voted father, and a fast friend." Such is the 
testimony of all his acquaintances who have 
left any record of their impressions. 

149 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

IV. 

It is not my purpose to present any critical 
study of James or of his works, but only to sub- 
mit a few of his unpublished letters, in which 
his easy grace of style and his frank and simple 
nature are manifest; to give some of the con- 
temporary estimates of him; and to recall to 
the minds of readers of our own day a literary 
personality which should not be entirely for- 
gotten. 

Among the good friends of James of whom 
I have spoken was that other novehst, almost 
as prolific in production, but better remem- 
bered by modern readers— Charles Lever. 
When the author of Charles O^Malley was the 
editor of the Dublin University Magazine, he 
wrote to a certain Reverend Edward Johnson, 
now wholly lost to fame, requesting him to 
contribute to the magazine and inviting him 
to visit the editor; but by mistake he addressed 
the letter to James. "Though he liked the man," 
says Mr. Fitzpatrick, "he rather pooh-poohed 
the stereotyped *two cavaliers' of G. P. R. 
James, who of a fine autumnal day might be 
seen, etc." ^ Lever was too kind-hearted to 
explain the error, and James not only contrib- 

1 Life of Lever, II. 21. 

150 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

uted to the magazine but visited Lever at 
Templeogue. The story '^T)e Lunatico In- 
qutrendo^^ was supposed to have been written 
by Lever, who wrote only the preface. ^ ^Arrah 
NeiV was published in the Magazine, a work 
which has peculiar merit and one character. 
Captain Barecolt, who is among James's best 
people. It is said that James abused McGlashan 
for having " emasculated his jokes." "Where be 
they? as we used to say in the Catechism" was 
Lever's comment. One Major Dwyer, referred 
to in Fitzpatrick's Life of Lever ^ says: "Lever 
would sometimes say that he wanted powder 
for his magazine. *It is doubtful whether 
James's contributions,' he said, *were James's 
powders at all, or merely that inferior substi- 
tute which the Pharmacopoeia condemns.'" 
Chamber's Cyclopaedia stated, twenty years 
before the death of James, that he was in the 
habit of dictating to minor scribes his thick- 
coming fancies. Mr. R. H. Home would have 
it that he always dictated his novels, but that 
was a very exaggerated statement. He dictated 
only at intervals. Major Dwyer tells of a novel 
composed by James at Baden, that "it was 
penned by an English artist who resided at 
Lichtenthal, and also spoke the purest South 
Devonian, and moreover wrote English nearly 

151 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD ]AMES 

as he pronounced it. James's flowery language 
thus rendered, was highly amusing; I had an 
opportunity of reading some pages of copy." 
In spite of his disparaging remarks. Lever 
was attached to the man himself, and we find 
the two romance-writers together in 1845, at 
Karlsruhe -where, as Mr. Downey says in his 
Life of Lever ^ "G. P. R. James and himself were 
the cynosure of all eyes"— and later at Baden. 
Lever dedicated to James his novel Roland 
Cashely in 1849 -"a Roland for your Oliver, 
or rather for your Stepmother," said Lever, for 
James had dedicated to him the novel with 
that title in 1846. Soon afterwards, however, 
they became separated, as James went to the 
United States where he remained about eight 
years. One incident connected with the Dublin 
is worthy of remembrance. In Volume XXVII 
of the Magazine (1846) appeared some verses 
beginning "A cloud is on the western sky." 
They were said to be "Lines by G. P. R. James" 

and were " prefaced by a note : * My dear L , 

I send you the song you wished to have. The 
Americans totally forgot, when they so inso- 
lently calculated upon aid from Ireland in a 
war with England, that their own apple is 
rotten at the core. A nation with five or six 
million slaves who would go to war with an 

152 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

equally strong nation with no slaves is a mad 
people. Yours, G. P. R. James/ *The Cloud/ 
(amongst other things not intended to be 
pleasant to Americans) called upon the dusky 
millions to * shout/ and the author of the 
*Lines' declared that Britain was ready to 
'draw the sword in the sacred cause of liberty/ " 
It was Lever's joke. Poor James had never 
heard of the poem until years later, in 1853, 
an attempt was made to drive James out of 
Norfolk, Virginia, because of it. "God forgive 
me," said Lever, "it was my doing." Lever de- 
clared that he had no more notion of James's 
"powder" exciting a national animosity than 
that Holloway's Ointment could absorb a Swiss 
glacier. ^ The son says that during the first 
winter they spent in Norfolk there were no 
less than eight fires in the house, or in other 
parts of the block, which James attributed to 
deliberate attempts to burn him out on account 
of his supposed abolitionist views. 

Lever was Consul at Spezzia when James 
was in Venice, and they renewed their old 
intimacy. The younger James says that he was 
a very eccentric genius-a thorough specimen 
of the wild Irishman. Among Lever's traits was 

1 Fitzpatrick's Life of Lever, II.— 418. 

153 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD ]AMES 

chronic impecuniosity Another was that he, 
as well as his family, delighted in out-door life 
and could do everything athletic. "When he 
was at Venice he told us he was threatened 
with a visit from a British war vessel, which 
it would be his duty to receive in state, and 
(of course) he had no boat or other means of 
doing so with proper pomp. *But,' he said, * we 
can take the British flag in our mouth and 
swim out to meet her, singing Rule Britannia.' " 
Notwithstanding the manifestations of hos- 
tility by the good people of Norfolk, it may 
be remembered that when James was trans- 
ferred to Venice, the Virginian poet, John R. 
Thompson, addressed to him some farewell 
verses, published in the Southern Literary 
Messenger^ which I consider worthy of repro- 
duction: 

Good bye! they say the time is up— 

The "solitary horseman" leaves us. 
We'd like to take a "stirrup cup," 

Though much indeed the parting grieves us: 
We'd like to hear the glasses clink 

Around a board where none was tipsy. 
And with a hearty greeting drink 

This toast -The Author of the Gipsy! 



154 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

The maidens fair of many a clime 

Have blubbered o'er his tearful pages. 
The Ariosto of his time, 

Romancist of the Middle Ages; 
In fiction's realm a shining star, 

(We own ourselves his grateful debtors) 
Who would not call our G. P. R.- 

"H. B. M. CZ-a Man of Letters? 

But not with us his pen avails 

To win our hearts^-this English scion. 
Though there are not so many tales 

To every roaring British Lion— 
For he has yet a prouder claim 

To praise, than dukes and lords inherit. 
Or wealth can give, or lettered f ame— 

His honest heart and modest merit. 

An Englishman, whose sense of right 

Comes down from glorious Magna Charta, 
He loves, and loves with all his might. 

His home, his Queen, Pale Ale, the Garter; 
The last embraces much, 'tis best 

To comprehend just what is stated— 
For Honi Soit—yoxx know the rest 

And need not have the French translated. 



155 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

Ol empty bauble of renown. 

So quickly lost and won so dearly. 
Our Consul wears the Muses' crown. 

We love him for his virtues merely; 
A Prince, he's ours as much as Fame's, 

And reigns in friendship kindly o'er us. 
Then call him George Prince Regent James, 

And let his country swell the chorus. 

His country) we would gladly pledge 

Its living greatness and its glory-- 
In Peace admired, and "on the edge 

Of battle" terrible in story: 
A little isle, its cliffs it rears 

'Gainst wind and waves in wrath united. 
And nobly for a thousand years 

Has kept the fire of freedom lighted. 

A glowing spark in time there came. 

Like sunrise, o'er the angry water. 
And here is fed, an altar flame. 

By Britain's democratic daughter-- 
From land to land a kindred fire 

Beneath the billow now is burning, 
O may it thrill the magic wire 

With only love and love returning! 



156 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

But since we cannot meet again 

Where wine and wit are freely flowing. 
Old friend! this measure take and drain 

A brimming health to us in going: 
And far beneath Italians sky. 

Where sunsets glow with hues prismatic. 
Bring out the bowl when you are dry. 

And pledge us by the Adriatic! 

The same Major Dwyer relates at some 
length the conversations of the guests at 
Lever's home in Ireland. Speaking of a visit 
of Thackeray about 1 842, he says: "J^nies had 
been living at Brussels previously, and an in- 
timacy had sprung up between Lever and him. 
Thackeray's star was then barely peeping over 
the eastern horizon; Lever's had attained an 
altitude that rendered it clearly visible to the 
uncharmed eye, whilst James's had already 
passed its point of culmination, and was in its 
descending node." I do not know what the 
eloquent Major meant by an "uncharmed eye," 
but his figures of speech are quite luxuriant. 
He does not think that Thackeray and James 
met at Lever's house, but he tells of a dinner 
there where a Captain Siborne, Doctor Anster, 
and the Major were asked to meet James. It 
appears that after dinner, James took a very 

157 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

decided lead in the conversation on horseman- 
ship and military tactics. "James" remarks the 
Major, "was not horsey-looking; one would at 
first sight be inclined to set him down as an 
exception to the general rule, that 'all Britons 
are oorn riders;' he looked more like a seaman 
than a soldier." This is deliciously British'-as 
if a man could not talk well about horses 
unless he had a horsey look or drive fat oxen 
unless he himself were fat. In talking about 
horses and riders, James evidently did not 
foresee that in the future his name would be 
so closely associated with "one horseman" or 
even two, threading romantic gorges. It would 
have been better for his fame, if he had es- 
chewed horsemen. "Why," continues the 
Major, "he should have selected two such 
topics puzzled both Siborne and myself, but I 
subsequently found that James liked to seize 
upon and talk categorically about things which 
other individuals of the company present 
might be suspected of considering their own 
peculiar hobbies." This device for enlivening 
post-prandial dullness by stirring up solemn 
and conceited prigs is quite familiar, but it 
does not seem to have occurred to the Major 
that the clever novelist was making game of 
the two military magnates. He tells us further 

158 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

how Siborne declined "to discuss professional 
matters with a civilian," and closes his pom- 
pous and heavy remarks with this gem of 
concentrated wisdom: "James, so fond of horse- 
flesh, finished his career as Consul General at 
Venice where the sight of a horse is never seen,^ 
I suppose that the Major would have con- 
sidered it more fitting if James had selected 
some place to die in where "the sight of a 
horse could be seen" at all times by merely 
looking out of the window. It is not difficult 
to imagine the joy with which the nimble- 
minded James put through their paces the 
heavy-witted and cumbrous Captain and 
Major at the pleasant dinner-table of Charles 
Lever. It reminds me of an occasion when a 
sincere and simple-minded Briton undertook 
to engage in single combat with Mark Twain 
over a statement thrown out by the equally 
sincere and simple-minded Clemens that the 
people of the Philippine Islands had a perfect 
right to make arson and murder lawful if they 
considered it proper to incorporate in their 
constitution a provision to that effect. His 
powerful arguments did not produce the 
slightest change in the convictions of Mr. 
Clemens. 



159 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

V. 

However severely the sapient compilers of 
Chambers^ Cyclopedia or the critics of our 
own generation may sneer at the novels—the 
fiction of the twentieth century being in the 
estimation of our contemporaries so vastly 
superior to all that has gone bef ore-it is some- 
thing to have had the approval of Christopher 
North, who was not given to bestowing lav- 
ish commendation upon the work of mere 
Englishmen. If you will take from the shelves 
the Nodes Amhrosianw^ you will find these 
words: 

^^ North: Mr. Colburn has lately given us 
two books of a very different character [from 
that of some previously mentioned], Richelieu 
and T)arnley^hy Mr. James. Richelieu is one 
of the most spirited, amusing and interesting 
romances I ever read; characters well drawn— 
incidents well managed-story perpetually 
progressive-catastrophe at once natural and 
unexpected-moral good, but not goody-and 
the whole felt, in every chapter, to be the 
work of a-gentleman. 

Shepherd: And what o' Darnley? 

North: Read and judge." ^ 

1 Noctes Ambrosianae, II. 370 — Blackwood Edition, 1887. 

i6o 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

Edgar Allen Poe, who thought himself a 
critic while he was an original genius abso- 
lutely unfitted for just or accurate criticism, 
said that James was lauded from mere motives 
of duty, not of inclination'-duty erroneously 
conceived. "His sentiments are found to be 
pure/ wrote Poe, "his morals unquestionable 
and pointedly shown f orth-his language indis- 
putably correct." But he calls him an indif- 
ferent imitator of Scott, accuses him of having 
little pretension to genius, and adds that we 
"seldom stumble across a novel emotion in the 
solemn tranquillity of his pages." ^ Elsewhere 
Poe says: "James's multitudinous novels seem 
to be written upon the plan of the songs of the 
Bard of Schiraz, in which, we are assured by 
Fadladeen,'the same beautiful thought occurs 
again and again in every possible variety of 
phrase.'" This is, perhaps, a fair comment 
upon the work of a writer who produced too 
many books. 

Samuel Carter Hall, who knew James well, 
and who gossips with garrulous freedom about 
everybody, speaks of him in an admiring way. 
After observing that very little was known of 
James's life, he says: "I knew him and esteemed 

1 Marginalia, Black's Edition— III. 393. 

i6i 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

him as an agreeable and kindly gentleman, 
somewhat handsome in person, and of very 
pleasant manners. He had the aspect, and in- 
deed the character, that usually marks a man 
of sedentary occupations. His work all day 
long, and often into the night, must have been 
untiring, for he by no means drew exclusively 
on his fancy; he must have resorted much to 
books and have been a great reader, not only 
of English, but of continental histories; and he 
travelled a good deal in the countries in which 
the scenes of his historic fictions were princi- 
pally laid. His novels have always been 
popular --they are so now, although many 
competitors for fame, with higher aims and 
perhaps loftier genius, have of late years sup- 
plied the circulating libraries. It was no light 
thing to run a race with Sir Walter Scott, and 
not to be altogether beaten out of the field. 
His great charm was the interest he created in 
relating a story, but he had masterly skill in 
delineating character, and in *chivalric essays' 
none of his brethren surpassed him." ^ He gives 
to James more praise for character-drawing 
than most of the critics bestow. 
Hall quotes from Alison : ** There is a con- 

1 Hall's Book of Memories, 263. 

162 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

slant appeal in his brilliant pages, not only to 
the pure and generous, but to the elevated 
and noble sentiments. He is imbued with the 
very soul of chivalry, and all his stories turn 
on the final triumph of those who are influ- 
enced by such feelings. Not a word or a 
thought which can give pain to the purest 
heart ever escapes from his pen." 

The genial journalist, William Jerdan, in 
his Autobiography pays a deserved tribute to 
James. He says: "Among the warm friend- 
ships to which I may allude, there is not one 
more sincere, more lasting, or more grateful 
to my feelings, than that which I have the 
honour and delight to couple with the admired 
and estimable name of G. P. R. James. I think 
it was the production of * The Ruined City,' 
for private circulation, which first introduced 
us to each other; and from that hour (I remem- 
ber the pleasure I received from his volun- 
teering a trial of his skill occasionally in the 
'Gazette') I now look back on a quarter of 
a century upon a close intercourse of minds 
and hearts, without a passing shade to dull 
its bright and cheering continuity. I need not 
dwell on those voluminous writings which 
have placed Mr. James in the foremost rank 
of our national fictitious literature, nor need I, 

163 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

in his case, illustrate my theme of the uncer- 
tainty of literature as a remunerative pursuit— 
with a private fortune, and the genius which 
has produced so many admirable works, the 
author has now fallen back upon a consulate 
at Norfolk, in America, where, if report speaks 
truth, he is exposed even to danger in conse- 
quence of petty resentment against something 
he wrote long ago about Slavery!— but, I may 
say, from nearer and more abundant obser- 
vation than the world could attain, that the 
utmost appreciation of his genius must fall 
short of what is due to his personal worth and 
nobility of nature. As no author ever excelled 
him in the purity and rectitude of his publi- 
cations—every tone of which tends to inspire 
just moral sentiment, and exalted virtue, and 
brotherly love, and universal benevolence, 
and the improvement, carrying with it the 
progress and happiness of his fellow creatures 
—so no man in private life ever more zeal- 
ously practiced the precepts which he taught, 
and was charitable, liberal, and generous, aye, 
beyond the measure of cold prudence, and 
without an atom of selfish reserve. To his 
fellow-labourers on the oft-ungrateful soil of 
letters, he was ever indulgent and munificent; 
and were this the fitting time, I could record 

164 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

acts of his performing that would shed a lustre 
on any character, however celebrated in mer- 
ited biographical panegyric. I trust I may state, 
without compromising the privacy of friendly 
confidence, that I knew him, as he was ever 
ready to make sacrifices to friendship, sacrifice 
half a fortune, legally in his possession, to a 
mere point of honourable, I might say, roman- 
tically honourable feeling, and founded indeed 
on one of those family romances in which we 
find fact more extraordinary than fiction; and 
amongst lesser instances of his general sym- 
pathies for all who stood in need of succour, I 
may mention his procuring me the gratifica- 
tion of handing over £75 to the Literary Fund, 
as the price received from Messrs. Coburn 
and Bentley for a manuscript entitled 'The 
String of Pearls.'" ^ 

I have referred to the remark in Chambers^ 
Cyclopcedia about the custom of James to dic- 
tate to an amanuensis, a custom he attempted 
to defend. The writers for this useful work, 
now rather antiquated, were quite given to 
the exercise of censorious judgment about 
authors who did not preserve their popularity. 
They say of James, however, that he was per- 

1 Autobiography, IV. 210. 

165 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

haps the best of the numerous imitators of 
Scott, and that if he had concentrated his 
powers on a few congenial subjects or periods 
of history, and "resorted to the manual labor 
of penmanship as a drag-chain on the machine, 
he might have attained to the highest honors 
of this department of composition. As it is, he 
has furnished many light, agreeable and pic- 
turesque books, none of questionable ten- 
dency." The Cyclopaedia breaks into excla- 
mation points when it chronicles the fact that 
the original works of Mr. James "extend to 
one hundred and eighty-nine volumes," and 
that he edited almost a dozen more. It then 
quotes from some unnamed critic whom it 
calls a "lively writer," ^ and as I am endeavor- 
ing to present the contemporary estimates of 
James, I venture to reproduce the quotation: 

"There seems to be no limit to his ingenuity, 
his faculty of getting up scenes and incidents, 
dilemmas, artifices, contretemps^ battles, skir- 
mishes, disguises, escapes, trials, combats, 
adventures. He accumulates names, dresses, 
implements of war and peace, official retinues, 
and the whole paraphernalia of customs and 
costumes, with astounding alacrity. He appears 

1 It was R. H. Home. A New Spirit of the Age (1844) p. 136. 

i66 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

to have exhausted every imaginable situation, 
and to have described every available article 
of attire on record. What he must have passed 
through -what triumphs he must have en- 
joyed -what exigencies he must have experi- 
enced-what love he must have suf f ered-what 
a grand wardrobe his brain must be! He has 
made some poetical and dramatic efforts, but 
this irresistible tendency to pile up circumstan- 
tial particulars is fatal to those forms of art 
which demand intensity of passion. In stately 
narratives of chivalry and feudal grandeur, 
precision and reiteration are desirable rather 
than injurious— as we would have the most 
perfect accuracy and finish in a picture of 
ceremonials; and here Mr. James is supreme. 
One of his court romances is a book of brave 
sights and heraldic magnificence-it is the next 
thing to moving at our leisure through some 
superb and august procession." 

The lively writer has a style which displays 
the worst faults of the middle nineteenth cen- 
tury, but he is really not far wrong in his con- 
clusions. The Cyclopaedia sums up the matter 
in a sentence which tells the story and signifies 
that the man wrote too much: 

" The sameness of the author's style and char- 
acters is, however, too marked to be pleasing." 

167 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD IAMBS 

I timidly venture to suggest that the same 
thing may be true of Kipling and hope that I 
may not be annihilated by the bolts of Jupiter 
for such a daring piece of sacrilege. Having 
gone so f ar'-but I will refrain from mention- 
ing some other makers of novels with regard 
to whom the same fable might be narrated. 

We may easily understand that the accusa- 
tion of "sameness" is one which is not very 
serious when preferred against the author of 
nearly two hundred volumes. As Allibone 
says, "He who composes a library is not to be 
judged by the same standard as he who writes 
but one book." We must remember that Pro- 
fessor Wilson praises him and Leigh Hunt» 
about whose taste and discrimination there 
can be no question, says of him: 

"I hail every fresh publication of James, 
though I half know what he is going to do 
with his lady, and his gentleman, and his land- 
scape, and his mystery, and his orthodoxy, and 
his criminal trial. But I am charmed with the 
new amusement which he brings out of old 
materials. I look on him as I look on a musi- 
cian famous for * variations." I am grateful for 
his vein of cheerfulness, for his singularly 
varied and vivid landscapes, for his power of 
painting women at once ladylike and loving, 

i68 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

(a rare talent) for making lovers to match, at 
once beautiful and well-bred, and for the 
solace which all this has afforded me, some- 
times over and over again in illness and in 
convalescence, when I required interest with- 
out violence, and entertainment at once ani- 
mated and mild." 

Allan Cunningham, in his Biographical and 
Critical History of the Literature of the Last 
Fifty Years (l8}j) refers to his excellent taste, 
extensive knowledge of history, right feeling 
of the chivalrous, and heroic and ready eye 
for the picturesque, adding that his proprieties 
are admirable and his sympathy with what- 
ever is high-souled and noble, deep and im- 
pressive. Cunningham was on terms of inti- 
macy with him, as a number of letters from 
James addressed to him abundantly prove. The 
Edinburgh Review estimated highly his abil- 
ities as a romance-writer, declaring that his 
works were lively and interesting, and ani- 
mated by a spirit of sound and healthy morality 
in feeling and of natural deliberation in char- 
acter which should secure for them a calm 
popularity which would "last beyond the 
present day." 

He was not regarded so favorably by the 
London Athenaum^ which said of him: "The 

169 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

first and most obvious contrivance for the 
attainment of quantity, is, of course, dilution; 
but this recourse has practically its limit, and 
Mr. James had reached it long ago. Common- 
place in its best day, anything more feeble, 
vapid'^sloppy in fact, (for we know not how 
to characterize this writer's style but by some 
of its own elegancies) -than Mr. James's man- 
ner has become, it were difficult to imagine. 
Every literary grace has been swamped in the 
spreading marasmus of his style." ^ 

The bewildered reader of reviews is often 
at a loss to reconcile the censure of one and 
the praise of another; and it was not very long 
before the appearance of this slashing article 
that the Dublin University Magazine had thus 
expressed its opinions: "His pen is prolific 
enough to keep the imagination constantly 
nourished; and of him, more than of any 
modern writer, it may be said, that he has 
improved his style by the mere dint of con- 
stant and abundant practice. For, although so 
agreeable a novelist, it must not be forgotten 
that he stands infinitely higher as an histor- 
ian. * * * The most fantastic and beautiful 
coruscations which the skies can exhibit to 

1 London Athenaeum, April 11, 1846. 

170 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

the eyes of mankind dart as if in play from the 
huge volumes that roll out from the crater of 
the volcano. * * * The recreation of an en- 
larged intellect is ever more valuable than the 
highest efforts of a confined one. Hence we 
find in the works before us, lightly as they 
have been thrown off, the traces of study-the 
footsteps of a powerful and vigorous under- 
standing." ^ The works were Corse de Leon^ 
The Ancient Regime^ and The Jacquerie—none 
of them as deserving as Richelieu^ Henry Mas- 
tertonj or Mary of Burgundy, James was a 
member of the Dublin staff and his friend 
Lever may have inspired the compliments. 

One more review may be noticed. Mr. E. P. 
Whipple, whose criticisms have not become 
immortal, evidently disapproved of James, and 
did not hesitate to say so. It is the old charge 
of sameness and over-production. Whipple 
scored James in the North American Review 
of April, 1844. 

*'He is a most scientific expositor of the fact 
that a man may be a maker of books without 
being a maker of thoughts; that he may be the 
reputed author of a hundred volumes and 
flood the market with his literary wares, and 

1 Dublin University Magazine, March, 1842. 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

yet have very few ideas and principles for his 
stock in trade. For the last ten years he has 
been repeating his own repetitions and echo- 
ing his own echoes. His first novel was a shot 
that went through the target, and he has ever 
since been assiduously firing through the hole. 
* * * When a man has little or nothing to 
say, he should say it in the smallest space. He 
should not, at any rate, take up more room 
than suffices for a creative mind. He should 
not provoke hostility and petulance by the 
effrontery of his demands upon time and 
patience. He should let us off with a few 
volumes, and gain our gratitude for his benev- 
olence, if not our praise for his talents." ^ 

Whipple's critiques are far more obsolete 
than James's novels; and a good deal of what 
he says of James is fairly applicable to his own 
essays. Even Whipple concedes the excel- 
lence of 'Richelieu ^ notwithstanding the fact 
that it did not emanate from New England. 

Back in the forties there was a magazine, 
published in Philadelphia, known as Graham^ s 
American Monthly Magazine^ in which the 
chief American writers of the day, including 
Poe, Bryant, Cooper, Longfellow, Willis, and 

1 Essays and Reviews, II., 116, 137. 

172 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

Lowell occasionally figured as contributors. 
It had its page of reviews and in the number 
of November, 1848, it enlightened its readers 
with a disquisition on "Vanity Fair; by W. M. 
Thackerway" [j/c], beginning "This is one of 
the most striking novels of the season." If 
Lamb could only have met that reviewer, he 
surely would have danced about, as on another 
memorable occasion, singing "diddle, diddle 
dumpling, my son John" and endeavored to 
examine the reviewer's bumps. Graham 
(November, 1844) was very severe with 
poor James, in a notice oiArrahNeiL The 
reviewer says : " In our opinion, there is hardly 
an instance on record of an author who has 
contrived to earn an extensive reputation as a 
writer of works of imagination, with such 
slender intellectual materials as Mr. James. 
No one has ever written so many books, pur- 
porting to be novels, with so small a stock of 
heart, brain, and invention. He is continually 
infringing his own copyright, by reproducing 
his own novels. Far from being surprised 
that he has written so much, we are aston- 
ished that he has not written more. From his 
first novel, all the rest can be logically de- 
duced; and the reason that they have not 
appeared faster, may be found in the fact that 

173 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

he has been economical in the employment of 
amanuenses." More of this kind of talk is in- 
dulged in without a single word about the 
book itself or its merits; which proves quite 
clearly that the reviewer was merely follow- 
ing the path marked out by some other critic, 
and there is no evidence whatever that he had 
ever read the work he was reviewing. Thus 
it is to-day; a parrot-cry of "diffuseness, dilu- 
tion, re-copying, repetition,"-- so easy to pro- 
claim, so difficult to answer, all born of the 
disposition of newspaper and magazine critics 
to accept the view which needs no exercise 
of brains to approve and to announce. It is 
not without significance that when James was 
in America, he was a contributor to this same 
magazine which had scored him so unmerci- 
fully; for example, in the volume for 1851 I 
find two stories by him ^Christian Lacy, a 
Tale of the Salem Witchcraft, and Justinian 
and Theodora, as well as a rather graceful son- 
net to Jenny Lind. 

James C. Derby mentions the fact that James 
was a friend of Philip Pendleton Cooke, the 
Virginian poet, and relates that Thackeray 
visited James when in the South, but that 
James "resented the latter's [Thackeray's] 
flings at him as a 'solitary horseman,' " the mean- 

174 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

ing of which those who have read James's 
novels will understand. James once told 
Cooke of his intention to write his own mem- 
oirs-a purpose never fulfilled. Incidentally, 
he told Cooke a story of Washington Irving, 
his early adviser, who amiably approved of 
his earliest essays in literature. It seems that 
James was in Bordeaux, and after strolling all 
day, returned to his inn. On his way through 
a long, dark passage he saw some one in front 
carrying a candle, a man in black slowly as- 
cending the old-fashioned staircase. On the 
landing the man stopped, and holding up his 
candle looked at a cat lying on the window- 
sill, regarding the gazer with a surprised and 
frightened expression. The stranger in black 
looked at the cat for some time mutely and 
then muttered sadly, "Ah, pussy, pussy! If 
you had seen as much trouble as I have, you 
would not be surprised at anything." After 
which he went on up the stairs, said James, 
"and as I heard that Irving was in Bordeaux, 
I said to myself: *That can be nobody in the 
world but Irving,' which turned out to be a 
fact." ^ 
Frederick Locker-Lampson visited Walter 

1 Derby's Fifty Years Among Authors, etc., 405. 

175 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

Savage Landor at Fiesole in the early sixties, 
and found him reading a Waverly novel. 
Lampson congratulated the old poet on hav- 
ing so pleasant a companion in his retirement, 
and Landor, with a winning dignity, replied: 
"Yes, and there is another novelist whom I 
equally admire, my old friend [G. P. R.] 
James." ^ Locker-Lampson does not seem to 
have shared Landor's appreciation of James. 
He says, later in his memoirs: "It is a law of 
literature that every generation should be in- 
dustrious in burying its own, especially novels. 
What has become of Smollett and Mackenzie 
--the cockpit of the * Thunder' or the senti- 
mental Harley? Where is the shadowy Mr. 
G. P. R. James and where is that witty old 
ghost of the Silver Fork school, Mrs. Gore? 
* * * Yet they all had vogue." ^ It is odd 
that almost every one, in speaking of James, 
recites his numerous initials and bestows upon 
him the title of "Mr." which carries with it the 
implication of a sneer. 

In my small collection of Gladstone letters 
I find one addressed to James which shows not 
only that the statesman liked the books but 

1 My Confidences, 161, 

2 My Confidences, 533, 534. 

176 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

that he and the author were on terms of some 
intimacy. 

Whitehall, May 17, '43- 

My Dear Sir: I thank you very much for 
your renewed kindness. The perusal of your 
last work gave me very great pleasure, most 
of all (though that is but a very slender testi- 
mony in their favour) Evesham and Simon de 
Montfort, of whom I never had before an 
adequate conception. It is true I am adopted 
into the Cabinet, & will I fear be alleged as a 
proof of its poverty. In point of form I can- 
not succeed Lord Ripon until the Queen holds 
a Council. ^ The true and whole secret of the 
difficulty about Canada corn (and I do not 
mean that we can wonder at it) is, as I believe, 
that wheat, without great abundance, is at 46/ 
a quarter. 

I remain, my dear sir. 

Yours faithfully & obliged, 

W. E. Gladstone. 
G. P. R. James, Esq., 

The Shrubbery, Walmer. 

Donald G. Mitchell, describing the little red 
cottage of Hawthorne, in the Berkshire hills, 

1 Mr. Gladstone succeeded Lord Ripon as President of the 
Board of Trade and took his seat in the Cabinet on May 19, 1843. 

177 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

reminds us that among those who used to 
come a-visiting the great American romancer, 
was "G. P. R. James, that kindly master of 
knights *in gay caparison;'" and elsewhere 
says that at the Cooper Memorial meeting in 
Metropolitan Hall, on February 25, 1852, 
where Webster, Bryant and Hawks paid their 
tribute to the author of the Leatherstocking 
tales, "Mr. G. P. R. James-then chancing to be 
a visitor in New York-lent a little of his ram- 
bling heroics to the interest of the occasion." ^ 
I have before me the Memorial^ printed by 
Putnam in 1852, containing a full report of 
the meeting, including the remarks of James, 
and I do not find anything which may fairly 
be called "heroics," rambling or otherwise. 
The speech was manifestly extemporaneous. 
He began by expressing his pride in being an 
Englishman, a romance writer, and a man of 
the people, and his pleasure in paying an 
humble tribute to an American romance- 
writer and a man of the people. He praised 
the addresses of those who preceded him, cor- 
rected a trifling error of Bryant's in regard to 
a Mr. James, a surgeon, and declared that the 
proposed statue to Cooper was not merely to 

I American Lands and Letters, IL, 252. 

178 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

a novelist, but to a genius-to truth-to truth, 
genius and patriotism combined. He closed 
by urging all present to use every exertion to 
procure contributions for the purpose of erect- 
ing such a statue. To any unprejudiced mind, 
what James said was appropriate and digni- 
fied; well suited to the occasion; wholly nat- 
ural and unaffected; and compared favorably, 
to say the least, with the dull and ponderous 
commonplaces of Daniel Webster who had 
the chair and who was singularly unfitted to 
preside over such a meeting. Of Webster's 
platitudes. Professor Lounsbury is quite con- 
temptuous, remarking that the distinguished 
orator "had nothing to say and said it wretch- 
edly." ^ I believe that the projected statue was 
never built. James was evidently a favorite 
dinner-speaker. It is pleasant to know that he 
spoke at a sprinter's banquet' in New York in 
the latter part of 1850, and that he paid a 
well-merited tribute to a man destined to be- 
come a distinguished figure in literature. 
Bayard Taylor, writing to his friend George 
H. Boker, on January i, 185 1, says: "By the 
bye, James paid me a very elegant compli- 
ment, in his speech at the sprinter's banquet' 

1 Life of Cooper, 268. 

179 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

the other night, referring to me as the best 
landscape painter in words that he had ever 
known. This is something from an English- 
man." ^ He always said kind and appreciative 
words about his fellow-authors, if they were 
deserving. 

Returning to the Hawthorne cottage, Julian 
Hawthorne gives a brief account of one of the 
visits of James, who, it appears, was living 
near by during the summer of 185 1. As the 
narrator was five years old at the time of this 
visit, his estimate of the visitors must have 
been founded upon something other than his 
personal observation. He says: 

"James was a commonplace, meritorious 
person, with much blameless and intelligent 
conversation, but the only thing that recalls 
him personally to my memory is the fact of 
his being associated with a furious thunder- 
storm." 

He relates how the storm raged and how 
the door burst open,'-his father and he were 
alone in the cottage— 

"and behold! of all persons in the world-to 
be heralded by such circumstances-G. P. R. 
James! Not he only, but close upon his heels 

1 Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, I., 203. 

i8o 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

his entire family, numerous, orthodox, admi- 
rable, and infinitely undesirable to two 
secluded gentlemen without a wife and mother 
to help them out. * * * They dripped on 
the carpet, they were conventional and cour- 
teous; we made conversation between us but 
whenever the thunder rolled. Mrs. James be- 
came ghastly pale. Mr. James explained that 
this was his birthday, and that they were on a 
pleasure excursion. He conciliated me by 
anecdotes of a pet magpie, or raven, who stole 
spoons. At last the thunderstorm and the G. 
P. R. Jameses passed off together." ^ 

It is not uninteresting to compare this rather 
patronizing and supercilious narration of a 
trivial incident with that which is given in his 
own Journal by the father of this precocious 
young gentleman of five years; and it is prob- 
ably the fact that the story was related by the 
son not from his own memory but from the 
record of the Journal, reproduced in "Nathan- 
iel Hawthorne and his Wife," by Julian Haw- 
thorne. ^ Nathaniel Hawthorne evidently liked 
James. Under date of July 30, 1851, he says: 

"We walked to the village for the mail, and 

1 Hawthorne and his Circle, 33, 34. 

2 Vol. I., 422,423. 

l8l 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

on our way back we met a wagon in which 
sat Mr. G. P. R. James, his wife and daughter, 
who had just left their cards at our house. 
Here ensued a talk, quite pleasant and friendly. 
He is certainly an excellent man; and his wife 
is a plain, good, friendly, kind-hearted woman, 
and his daughter a nice girl. Mr. James spoke 
of *The House of the Seven Gables' and of 
* Twice-Told Tales,' and then branched off 
upon English literature generally." ^ The ac- 
quaintance between the two authors must have 
been deemed to be of advantage to both, for 
the supercilious Master Julian takes care to 
present in full a note of invitation addressed 
by James to the elder Hawthorne asking the 
latter "with his two young people" to visit 
him. saying: "We are going to have a little 
haymaking after the olden fashion, and a syl- 
labub under the cow; hoping not to be dis- 
turbed by any of your grim old Puritans, as 
were the poor folks of Merrymount. By the 
way, you do not do yourself justice at all in 
your preface to the 'Twice-Told Tales.'-- but 
more on that subject anon." * 
Under the date of August 9, 1851, Haw- 

1 Hawthorne and his Wife, I., 415. 

2 Id. 397, 398. 

182 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

thorne gives his own version of the thunder- 
storm episode, in marked contrast with the 
condescending remarks of his hopeful son. It 
reveals the difference between parent and 
child. 

"The rain was pouring down/ says Haw- 
thorne senior, "and from all the hillsides mists 
were steaming up, and Monument Mountain 
seemed to be enveloped as if in the smoke of 
a great battle. During one of the heaviest 
showers of the day there was a succession of 
thundering knocks at the front door. On 
opening it, there was a young man on the door- 
step, and a carriage at the gate, and Mr. James 
thrusting his head out of the carriage window, 
and beseeching shelter from the storm! So 
here was an invasion. Mr. and Mrs. James, 
their eldest son, their daughter, their little son 
Charles, their maid-servant, and their coach- 
man;— not that the coachman came in; and as 
for the maid, she stayed in the hall. ^ Dear 
me! where was Phoebe in this time of need? 
All taken aback as I was, I made the best of 
it. Julian helped me somewhat, but not much. 
Little Charley is a few months younger than 
he, and between them they at least furnished 

1 A little bit snobbish for a Hawthorne, is it not ? 

183 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

subject for remark. Mrs. James, luckily, hap- 
pened to be very much afraid of thunder and 
lightning; and as these were loud and sharp, 
she might be considered hors de combat. The 
son, who seemed to be about twenty, and the 
daughter, of seventeen or eighteen, took the 
part of saying nothing, which I suppose is the 
English fashion as regards such striplings. So 
Mr. James was the only one to whom it was 
necessary to talk, and we got along tolerably 
well. He said that this was his birthday, and 
that he was keeping it by a pleasure excursion, 
and that therefore the rain was a matter of 
course.^ We talked of periodicals, English 
and American, and of the Puritans, about 
whom we agreed pretty well in our opinions; 
and Mr. James told how he had recently been 
thrown out of his wagon, and how the horse 
ran away with Mrs. James; and we talked 
about green lizards and red ones. And Mr. 
James told Julian how, when he was a child, 
he had twelve owls at the same time; and, at 
another time, a raven, who used to steal silver 
spoons and money. He also mentioned a 
squirrel, and several other pets; and Julian 
laughed most obstreperously. As to little 

1 Observe how Mr. Julian Hawthorne wholly omits the point 
of the observation about the pleasure excursion. 

184 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

Charles, he was much interested with Bunny 
(who had been returned to us from the Tap- 
pans, somewhat the worse for wear), and 
likewise with the rocking-horse, which luckily 
happened to be in the sitting-room. He ex- 
amined the horse most critically, and finally 
got upon his back, but did not show himself 
quite as good a rider as Julian. Our old boy 
hardly said a word. Finally the shower passed 
over, and the invaders passed away; and I do 
hope that on the next occasion of the kind my 
wife will be there to see." ^ 

I give the story in full, not only because of 
its relation to James and his family, but for its 
revelation of Hawthorne himself; the little 
touch of parental pride is amusing as well as 
affecting. What Nathaniel Hawthorne thought 
of James in those days is far more important 
than what Julian Hawthorne thinks of him 
now. 
Mr. Charles L. James writes to me: 
"Yes, I have read Hawthorne's account of 
our visit in a thunderstorm; and what is more, 
I remember the occurrence. I was little Char- 
ley, whom he mentions. I remember not only 
getting upon Julian's rocking-horse, but pull- 

1 Life of Hawthorne and his Wife, I., 422, 424. 

185 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

ing out his tail and being aghast at what I had 
done, for I did not possess a wooden horse 
and it had not occurred to me that the tail was 
movable." 

I am glad that Charles pulled out that tail; 
perhaps the memory of the outrage inspired 
the owner of the steed when he wrote his 
little story. 

Longfellow regarded James with a degree 
of kindness and esteem quite comparable to 
that with which Hawthorne looked upon him. 
In his Journal for September 17, 1850, he says, 
after mentioning several visitors: "Then 
Fields, with G. P. R. James, the novelist, and 
his son. He is a sturdy man, fluent and rapid, 
and looking quite capable of fifty more 
novels." ^ Later, on November 17, he says: 
"James, the novelist, came out to dinner with 
Sumner. He is a manly, middle-aged man, 
tirant sur le grison^ as Lafontaine has it, with 
a gray mustache; very frank, off-hand, and 
agreeable. In politics he is a Tory, and very 
conservative." ^ James certainly had no reason 
to complain of his reception by the best of our 
own literary men of that day. 

1 Life of H. W. Longfellow, by Stephen Longfellow, II., 177. 

2 Id. 182. 

i86 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

It is an evidence of the fact that James was 
admired and his ability appreciated by other 
authors, that he was suspected by no less a 
person than William Harrison Ainsworth of 
being the writer of Jane Eyre. I have before 
me an autograph letter from Ainsworth to 
James (November 14, 1849,) i^ which he says: 
"Anything I can do for you at any time you 
know you may command, and I shall only be 
too happy in the opportunity of making kindly 
mention in the N. M. M. of your Dark Scenes 
of History. The times are not propitious to 
us veterans and literature generally has within 
the last two years suffered a tremendous de- 
preciation. * * * Do you know I took it 
into my head that you were the author of 'Jane 
Eyre,' but I have altered my opinion since I 
read a portion of * Shirley.' Currer Bell, who- 
ever he or she may be, has certainly got some 
of your 'trick' * * * but 'Shirley' has again 
perplexed me." 

For some reason, no doubt an insignificant 
one, I have never been able to bring myself 
to the belief that Robert Louis Stevenson de- 
serves the worship which many sane people 
appear to accord to him. He had a style, of 
course, but not such a wonderful style as we 
are advised by numbers of solemn critics. I 

187 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

am disposed to be indulgent towards him be- 
cause of his modified fondness for James, 
which is expressed in a letter written by him 
from Saranac, February, i888» to E. L. Burlin- 
game. He says :^ 

"Will you send me (from the library) some 
of the works of my dear old G. P. R. James? 
With the following especially I desire to make 
or to renew acquaintance: The Songster^ The 
Gipsey^ The Convict^ The Stepmother^ The 
Gentleman of the Old School^ The Robber, 
Excusez du peu. This sudden return to an 
ancient favourite hangs upon an accident. The 
Franklin County Library contains two works 
of his» The Cavalier and Morley Ernst ein. I 
read the first with indescribable amusement 
—it was worse than I had feared, and yet some- 
how engaging; the second (to my surprise) 
was better than I had dared to hope; a good, 
honest, dull, interesting tale, with a genuine 
old-fashioned talent in the invention when 
not strained, and a genuine old-fashioned feel- 
ing for the English language. This experience 
awoke appetite, and you see I have taken steps 
to stay it. 

R. L. S." 



1 Letters, II., 111. 

i88 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

VI. 

I have a number of holograph letters of 
James, some of which show his pleasant ways 
and attractive playfulness. They constitute the 
raison (T etre of this commentary and so I will 
not apologize for giving them almost in full. 
He speaks for himself far better than I can 
speak for him. He was surely not a Siborne 
or a Major Dwyer. To my mind these letters 
reveal the man, and they tell of an honest, 
genial man who was able to write. 

He writes to C. W. H. Ranken, at Bristol, thus: 

Rennes, 1 6 January, 1826. 
Rankeno amico caro carissimo: 

That unfortunate Gentleman upon whose 
back all the evils of this world have been laid 
from time immemorial, I mean the Devil, has 
certainly (to give him his due) been torment- 
ing my poor friend and schoolfellow pretty 
handsomely. What with your cough in the 
first place and your abscess in the second you 
have been quite a martyr, but remember the 
martyrs always reach heaven at last and I 
doubt not that your sufferings will soon be 
over and that in the little Paradise you have 
planned for yourself some five or six miles 
from London (rather a cockney distance by 

189 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

the by) you will enjoy the happiness of the 
blest with those you love best. I think I shall 
make the same compact with you that I have 
made with Becknell namely that in after years 
when time has laid his heavy hand upon us 
all and when you are happy in your children 
and your children's children you will still give 
the crusty old Bachelor a place at your fire- 
side and your Sophia shall furnish me with 
strong green tea and I will take my pinch of 
snuff and tell you Grandam's tales to amuse 
the little ones or recount the wonderful things 
I have seen in my travels or growl at the de- 
generacy of the world and praise the good 
old days when I was young and gay and did 
many a wondrous deed for "Ladye love and 
pride of Chivalrie" and you shall forgive many 
a cross word and ill-tempered remark for old 
friendship's sake and say "He was not always 
so but this world s sorrows have soured his 
temper poor old Man." 

You tell me to continue my history of Bre- 
tagne, but in sooth I know not where I left 
off. Memory, that lazy slut, has forgot to 
mend her pocket which has had a hole in it 
for some time and the consequence is that, of 
all I give her to keep for me, the dross alone 
remains and the better part is dropped by the 

190 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

wayside. But I am not at all in the mood to 
give any descriptions. I am philosophical and 
therefore will tell you a story. 

In that mighty empire which exceeds all 
others as much in wisdom as it does in size- 
in the time of Fo Whang, who was the six 
hundredth emperor of the ninety-seventh dy- 
nasty which has sat on the throne of Cathay, 
there lived a philosopher whose doctrine was 
such that every Chinese from the mandarin 
who enjoys the light of the celestial presence 
to the waterman who paddles his Junk in the 
river of Canton became proselytes. 

Every one knows that every Chinese from 
generation to generation is in manners, cus- 
toms, dress, and appearance so precisely what 
his father was before him that a certain Man- 
darin who had thought proper to fall into a 
trance for a century or so, waking from his 
sleep and entering his paternal mansion, found 
his great grandson, who was at dinner, so strik- 
ingly like himself that he was struck dumb 
with astonishment. There were the same wide 
thin eye-brows, there were the same beautiful 
black eyes no bigger than peas, there was the 
same delicate tea-colored complexion. He 
wore the same silk his ancestor had worn and 
the same chopsticks carried his food to his 

191 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

mouth. The Great Grandson instantly recog- 
nised his predecessor, but the resuscitated 
Mandarin, forgetting the lapse of years, mis- 
took his descendant for his own grandfather 
and each casting themselves on their belly 
wriggled towards each other with all symp- 
toms of respect. Such being the laudable rev- 
erence of this people for all customs sanctified 
by time, it may be well supposed that that doc- 
trine was magnificent which could take a 
Chinese by the ear, and such indeed was the 
doctrine of the Philosopher, namely, that wis- 
dom is folly and folly is wisdom. Which he 
proved thus: "The end of wisdom" said the 
Philosopher, "is to be happy. And the fewer 
are our wants the fewer can be our disap- 
pointments and consequently the happier we 
are. The fool has fewer wants than the wise 
man and the ignorant less wishes than the 
learned, and therefore the fool being the hap- 
piest is the wisest and the wise man is but a 
fool." Now the wise men (even in China) be- 
ing lamentably in the minority the Philosopher 
had all the voices for himself. Now there was 
a young Man named To-hi, who never pre- 
tended to be a wise man but was nevertheless 
not a fool, and going to the Philosopher he 
said to him -"Father I cannot help thinking 

192 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

that your doctrine means more than it appears 
to mean and I think I have found its explica- 
tion." "Speak freely, my Son" replied the Phil- 
osopher, "and tell me what you suppose it to 
be." "I imagine," said To-hi, "that you wish to 
inculcate that Men seek for wisdom above 
their power and destroy their happiness by 
examining too near the objects which produce 
it. For I remark that all that is beautiful in 
nature as well as in life is little better than a 
delusion which to be enjoyed must be seen 
from a distance. When I look at the hills of 
Tartary, they seem from here grand and soft 
and blue and changing all sorts of colors from 
the reflection of the Sun, but when I approach 
them I find nothing but heaps of barren rocks 
and frightful deserts. If we regard the finest 
skin with a magnifying glass, it is like coarsest 
cloth of Surat and the sunset that we admire 
for its soft splendor to the nations on the edge 
of the horizon is but the glare of midday. 
Thus then we ought to enjoy whatever the 
world offers us without searching for faults 
and be as happy as we can without seeking to 
be too wise. Is not this what you meant?" 
"My Son," replied the Philosopher "like many 
other Philosophers I did not well know what 
I meant and you, like many other commenta- 

193 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

tors, have given an explanation which the 
author never intended." 

Rennes, first of Feby. 

As you will see, my Dear Ranken, this letter 
has been written half a century but I have 
been wandering about the country and forgot 
to finish it before I went. Long before this 
however I hope you are fundamentally cured 
and prepared to set up on your own bottom. 
Doubtless you will find a vast fund of non- 
sense in the former part of this 'pistle but if it 
serves to give you a minute's amusement it 
will answer the object of 

Yours sincerely 

G. P. R. James 

Everybody seems to have written affection- 
ately to Charles Oilier, the publisher-Lamb, 
Hunt, Keats, Shelley, and a host of others. His 
son, Edmund, "beheld Charles Lamb with in- 
fantile eyes and sat in poor Mary Lamb s 
lap." ^ James writes to the elder Oilier, from 
the Chateau du Buisson, Garumbourg, pres 
Evreux, on August 7, 1829: 

1 Charles Oilier, 1788-1859. 

194 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

My Dear Mr. Oilier. 

I take advantage of a friend's departure for 
London, to write to you though I have nothing 
to say. I have done as much of my new book 
as I permit myself to do per diem and having 
nothing else to do my vile cacoethes scribendi 
prompts me to indite this epistle to your man- 
ifest trouble and annoyance. My father in- 
forms me you have been ill and calls your 
complaint "nothing but Dis-pep-sia." I hope 
and trust however that you have no such long 
word in your stomach, but if you have, noth- 
ing can be so good for it as crossing the water 
and visiting a friend in France. One of my 
visitors lately brought me over about twenty 
newspapers and also the information that my 
unfortunate Adra had never made her ap- 
pearance. Incontinent, I fell into one of my 
accustomed fits of passion which was greatly 
increased by finding that in none of the twenty 
journals was any advertisement or mention 
whatever of Richelieu which together with the 
news that about four and twenty people had 
asked for Richelieu and could not get it in 
England, Scotland or Ireland, made me write 
instantly to Mr. Bentley a very flaming letter 
about printing Adra &c. &c. &c. I had written 
to Mr. Colburn sometime ago without his 

195 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

doing me the honor to answer me, and there- 
fore I write not there again. I have since 
received an answer from Mr. R. Bentley and 
all has gone right. But I am most profanely 
ignorant of all news and therefore will beg you 
to answer me the following Qys. if you can. 
Has Richelieu been reviewed in the New 
Monthly? Has it ever been advertised? Does 
the sale proceed as successfully as when I left 
London? Will you see that its first success 
does not make Mr. Colburn relax in his efforts 
in its favor? Will you manage the reviewing 
of Adra and take care that it be sent to and 
noticed by as many publications as possible? 
Will you see that the list of persons to whom 
I desired it to be sent and which I left in Bur- 
lington street be attended to? Will you let 
me know whether there be anything in which 
I can in any way serve or pleasure you? I am 
sincere and ever yours. q p r ^^^^^ 

This letter dated at Maxpoffle, near Mel- 
rose, Roxburghshire, 14th June 1832. is ad- 
dressed to Allan Cunningham. 

My Dear Sir: 

When you were in this country last year, I 
told you not to forget me; and you promised 
that you would not; yet I doubt not that when 

196 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

you see the signature to this, memory will 
have much ado to call up the person who 
writes. Nevertheless I cannot forbear- even 
at the distance of time which has since 
elapsed, and the distance of space which in- 
tervenes-from telling you how much de- 
lighted I have been with your Maid of Elnar. 
I have not seen the whole* but various pass- 
ages in various reviews, have shown me so 
much surpassing beauty, that I do not wait 
even till I have been delighted with the whole, 
to tell you how great has been the pleasure I 
have felt from a part. 

I do not know very well how or why, but I 
have been lately sickening of poetry; and 
though once as great a dreamer as ever felt 
the sweet music of imagination in his heart of 
hearts, within the last four or five years I have 
found it all flat, stale, and unprofitable; and 
began to fancy myself a devout adorer of dull 
prose. I thank you then for showing me that 
there is still such a thing as poetry; and it 
would not at all surprise me to feel myself— 
after reading the Maid of Elnar through-tak- 
ing the top of the wave, and going over every 
poet again from Chaucer to Byron. Can you 
tell me what it is that causes such a strange 
revolution in tastes ? I declare for the last five 

197 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD ]AMES 

years since the Byron mania was upon me, 1 
have looked upon poetry as the most sappy, 
senseless misapplication of good words, that 
ever the whimsical folly of the universal fool, 
mankind, devised. A spark or two of the old 
faggot was rekindled in my heart about six 
weeks ago, by hearing a sonnet of Words- 
worth's read aloud; and that I believe induced 
me to read the extracts from your book; and 
now I am all ablaze. What I like in the vari- 
ous scattered passages of the Maid of Elnar, 
would be endless to tell without writing a 
review; but there is something throughout the 
whole which has enchanted me-a mingling 
of the fine spirit of old chivalry, with the 
sweet home feeling of calm happy nature that 
is something newer than even Spenser. As 
Oliver Cromwell used to say, I would say 
somethings Ay verily-- but I won't for fear 
you should think me exaggerating and there- 
fore I will bid you farewell. It is natural of 
course for me to hate you; for every author is 
bound to detest any other person who writes 
what is good. I would therefore fain pay you 
that compliment, but your book will not let 
me; and I must beg you to believe me 
Ever yours most truly 

G. P. R. James. 
198 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

I send this to your Bookseller, because I do 
not know where else to send it; and I pay it, 
because many a good wholesome letter which 
has been addressed to the care of mine, has 
never reached me for want of that precaution 
on the part of my correspondents. Before the 
letter reaches you, I shall have got and read 
the whole book; and by heaven, if the rest 
does not come up to the extracts, I shall either 
lampoon you or your critics. 

Another letter to Cunningham follows: 

Maxpoffle near Melrose Roxburghshire 

17th May 1833. 
My Dear Friend: 

To show you how little the fault that you 
notice is attributable to myself, I have only to 
tell you that I could not get a copy of Mary 
of Burgundy till three days after you had re- 
ceived it and my sister-in-law writes to Mrs. 
James, by the post that brought your letter, 
that although she had ordered the book 
through her own bookseller, she has not yet 
been able to get it, while friends of hers have 
obtained it at the circulating libraries. Not 
having lived in London for many years, I 
am quite unacquainted with all the ins and 

199 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

outs of these affairs and do not even know 
who is the Editor of the Athenaeum; but I 
think it somewhat hard measure on his part 
to make an author pay for the sins of his 
Bookseller and very different indeed from 
the usual liberal spirit that I have seen in 
his paper. 

Hov/ever, I never courted a Journalist in my 
life and although I know that I have suffered 
greatly on this account, yet I shall pursue the 
same plan; and only by endeavoring to make 
my works better than they have been, force 
all honest writers to give them their due share 
whatever it may be. At the same time I will 
endeavour as far as in me lies to prevent any 
such instances of neglect as those of which 
you complain taking place for the future, 
especially in regard to a paper which deserves 
so well of the public. Having done so, what- 
ever be the result the Editor must "tak his 
wuU o't, as the cat did o' the haggis." I never 
reply to criticism unless it be very absurd 
which is not likely to be the case with his; so 
let him "pour on, I will endure." 

In regard to the String of Pearls I not only 
begged a copy to be sent to you before any 
one else; I wrote you a long letter to be sent 
with it; but this is only one out of the many 

200 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

shameful pieces of negligence which Mr. 
Bentley has shown in my affairs. 

I trust that the Editor of the Athenaeum got 
a copy of Mary of Burgundy independent of 
that sent to you for I wish it clearly to be un- 
derstood that I send you my leather and pru- 
nella, as a man for whom I have a high 
admiration and esteem, and not at all as a 
critic. When you get them, review them 
yourself, let others Review, praise, abuse them, 
or let others abuse them as you find need; 
but still receive them as a mark of regard from 
me; and be sure that nothing you can say of 
them will diminish that regard. Whenever I 
have any one of them for which I wish a little 
lenity I will write you a note with it and tax 
your friendship upon the occasion; but still 
exculpate me in your own generous mind and 
plead my exculpation to others, of all intrigu- 
ing to gain undue celebrity for my works or 
of dabbling with literary coteries. I give in to 
my bookseller a list of my friends^amongst 
whom your name stands high and I leave all 
the rest to him. For the String of Pearls I was 
anxious both because it was given to a charity 
and because I was afraid the Publisher might 
lose by it; but this as far as I can remember is 
the only book for which I ever asked a review. 

20I 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

Thanks however, many thanks, for your 
critique in the Athenaeum which is calculated 
to do my book much good and is much more 
favorable than it deserves. Of your light cen- 
sure I will speak to you when we meet which 
I am happy to say will be soon<-at least I trust 
soon. On the twenty-eighth we leave this 
place for London on our way to Germany and 
Italy. My liver and stomach have become so 
deranged of late that I find it necessary to put 
myself under the hands of a physician whose 
prescription is an agreeable one. "Take the 
waters of Ems for two seasons and spend the 
intermediate time in travelling through Italy." 
This plan I am about to pursue, and in our 
way we shall spend a month in London when 
I will find you out. 

The country round us is lovely at present. 
After a cold lingering spring, summer has set 
in, in all its radiance and the world has burst 
at once into green beauty. You cannot fancy 
how lovely the Cheviots looked yesterday 
evening, as Mrs. James and I rode over the 
shoulder of the Eildons. The sky was full of 
the broken fragments of a past thunder storm 
and the lights and shadows were soft, superb 
and dreamlike. I know I may rave about beau- 
tiful scenery to you without fear or compunc- 

202 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

tion for the Maid of Elnar made me know 
that you love it as well as 

My Dear Allan, 

Ever yours truly, 

G. P. R. James. 

P. S.-I have not yet got your last volume 
but if it be as good as its predecessors you 
will have no occasion to whip your Genius. 
Allan Cunningham, Esqre., 

Belgrave Place, Pimlico, 

London. 

He writes again to Cunningham: 

lo July, 1835. 
I Lloyds Place, Blackheath. 
My Dear Friend: 

A thousand thanks for your kind letter and 
all the kind things it contains. I am glad that 
you like my friend the Gipsey, because your 
approval is worth much and though I think it 
tolerable myself, yet I have attributed a great 
part of its success to the name. In answer to 
the question you put, I do not think he was 
drowned: but I do not know with certainty. 
I have told all I do know and farther this de- 
ponent sayeth not. I have long been thinking 
of writing to you to tell you that the name of 

203 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD IAMBS 

Chaucer appears in the Scroop and Grosvenor 
roll in the year 1386 but all that I dare say 
you know. The best sketch of the real events 
of Chaucer's life is certainly that in Sir H. 
Nicholas' comments on that roll. Vol. IL, page 
404, wherein he probably states all that can 
be learned with certainty of his life and pro- 
ceedings. I tell you all this, although I dare 
say you are already acquainted with it because 
you asked me if I found any thing concerning 
our poet to let you know. The Black Prince 
comes on but slowly. So much examination 
and research is necessary that it is a most labo- 
rious and very expensive work. It has already 
cost me in journeys, transcriptions, books, 
MSS., &c., many hundred pounds without at 
all calculating my individual labour and do 
you know, my dear Allan, what I expect as 
my reward. Clear loss; and two or three re- 
views written by ignorant blockheads upon a 
subject they do not understand, for the pur- 
pose of damning a work which throws some 
new light upon English History. I am very 
much out of spirits in regard to historical liter- 
ature and though I would willingly devote my 
time and even my money to elucidate the dark 
points of our own history yet encouragement 
from the public is small and from the Govern- 

204 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

ment does not exist, so that I lay down the pen 
in despair of ever seeing English history any 
thing but what it is-a farago of falsehoods 
and hypotheses covered over with the tinsel 
of specious reasoning from wrong data. And 
so you tell Lord Melbourne when you see 
him. But to speak of a personage, you are 
more likely to see namely Mr. Chantry. There 
is a bust which I wish him very much to see 
and wish you would take a look at it first as I 
have not seen the original myself. I have a 
cast of it given me by my Banker at Florence, 
to whom the original belongs, and if the head 
be equal to the cast it is the most beautiful 
antique I have ever seen. It is to be seen at 
Mr. Brown's in University Street, Gower Street 
marble works. Ask to see the antique head 
belonging to Mr. Johnstone and write me but 
three lines to tell me what you think of it. He 
paid, I believe, two hundred pounds for it 
and would take I believe three or four. If 
it be as I think, it (pedestal and all) is worth 
double. 

Yours ever with best Compliments to your 
family 

G. P. R. James. 

Excuse a scrawl but I am not very well. 

205 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

I Lloyds Place, Blackheath 

5th Deer 1835 
My Dear Allan: 

I have sent you a book and have ten 
times the pleasure in sending you one now 
that ever I had, because I hear you have de- 
tached yourself from all reviews. Heaven 
be praised therefor; for now you can sit 
down quietly by your own ingle work and 
pick out all that is good-if there be any—in 
my One in a Thousand and palate it all, 
without the prospect, the damning prospect, 
of a broad sheet and small print before your 
eyes, and without wracking your honest brain 
to find out any small glimmerings of wit 
and wisdom in your friend's book in order 
to set it forth as fairly as may be to the carp- 
ing world. 

By the way, I thought you were honest and 
true; and yet you have deceived me wofuUy. 
You promised to come down to Blackheath 
and you have not appeared. I have been 
writing night and day or I should have pre- 
sented myself to call you to account. Will 
you come down even yet, and take a family 
dinner with me? Any Sunday at five you 
will be sure to find me but if you come on 
another day, let me have a day's notice by 

206 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD IAMBS 

post, lest I be engaged, which would be a 
great disappointment to 

Yours ever truly, 

G. P. R. James. 

He always wrote frankly and freely to Cun- 
ningham. This letter deals with Attila, 

The Cottage, Great Marlow, Bucks, 
15th April 1837 
My Dear Allan: 

Many thanks for your letter and kind words 
upon Attila. I do believe that he is a good 
fellow, at all events he is very successful in 
society and though there are not as you well 
know twenty people in London who know 
who Attila was, he is as well received, I un- 
derstand, as if he had the entree. Conjectures 
as to who Attila was are various in the well 
informed circles of the Metropolis, and ever 
since the book was advertised two principal 
opinions have prevailed, some people main- 
taining that He, Attila, was Hettman of the 
Cossacks and was succeeded by Platof f ; others 
asserting that he was a Lady, first cousin to 
Boru the Backwoodsman, and the heroine of 
a romance by Chateaubriand. This may look 
like a joke, but I can assure you, it is a fact 

207 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD )AMES 

and that out of one hundred people of the 
highest rank in Europe you will not find five 
who know who Attila was; setting aside the 
groveling animals who, as the Duke of Som- 
erset says, addict themselves to Literature. 

I am very sorry to hear you say that these 
well informed and enlightened times have not 
done justice to your romances. FU tell you 
one great fault they have, which is probably 
that which prevents the world from liking 
them as much as it should do: they have too 
much poetry in them, Allan, one and all from 
Michael Scott to Lord ^oldan. But you must 
not expect to succeed in all walks of art. You 
are a lyric poet and a biographer; how can 
you expect that the critics would ever let you 
come near romances. No, no; they feel it their 
bounden duty to smother all such efforts of 
your genius and they fulfil that duty with 
laudable zeal. Did you see how the Athe- 
naeum attempted to dribble its small beer 
venom upon Attila. If you have not, read 
that sweet and gramatical [j/V] article, when 
you will find that because a man has suc- 
ceeded in one style of writing he cannot 
succeed in another, and apply the critics dic- 
tum to yourself. One half of this world is 
made up of idiocy, insanity, humbug, and 

208 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

peculation, and the other half (very nearly) 

of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharita- 

bleness. 

Yours ever truly, 

G. P. R. James. 

This letter is directed to "Charles Oilier, 
Esq., Richard Bentley, Esq., New Burlington 
Street, London." 

Fair Oak Lodge, Petersfield, 
Hants, 25th December, 1837. 
My Dear Oilier: 

Mr. Bentley I think usually gives me six 
copies of a work such as Louis XIV. I have 
already had one copy of the first two volumes 
for the Duke of Sussex, and you will very 
much obHge me by having the copies sent to 
the following persons with my compliments 
written in the front leaf and dated Fair Oak 
Lodge, Petersfield : Lord John Russell, Wilton 
Crescent; S. M. Phillipps, Esq., Home Office; 
The Marquis Conyngham, Dudley House, 
Park Lane; The Lady Pol warth, 9 John Street, 
Berkeley Square; and also one to G. P. R. 
James, Fair Oak Lodge, which will make the 
six copies. I must also have another copy sent 
to my friend Seymour as soon as you can, ad- 
dressed as follows: "Sir G. Hamilton Seymour, 

209 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

G. C. H. Brussels, In the care of the Under 
Secretary of State F. O. Downing Street." For 
this last I will pay as soon as you let me know 
what is the price. Mr. Bentley charges me for 
the copy; I should like it to be accompanied 
by a copy of Henry Master ton ^ the small edi- 
tion of which by the [way] I have not re- 
ceived any copies and should like some. Pray 
let me know what Mr. B. charges me for Louis 
per copy as there are several other friends to 
whom I should like to give it, but as Sancho 
would say I must not stretch my feet beyond 
the length of my sheet. 

Yours ever, 

G. P. R. James. 

P. S."-! am anxious to get on with the two 
last volumes, but I suppose it is the merry sea- 
son which prevents my having any proofs 
as yet. 

A letter to Alaric Watts refers to the Bound- 
ary Question pamphlet: 

Fair Oak Lodge, Petersfield, Hants, 

9th April, 1839 
My Dear Watts: 

I write you ten lines in the greatest bustle 
that ever man was in to tell you that the death 
pf poor Sir Charles Paget turns me out of my 

210 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

house. This is not of necessity indeed, for I 
have a lease of it for some time yet unexpired, 
but Lady Paget sent to ask if I would let her 
come in again and I felt not in my heart to 
refuse the widow under such circumstances. 
I go before the first of May, but I do sincerely 
wish that between this and then I may have 
the pleasure of seeing your here. I think that 
you will believe me to be a sincere man: a 
tolerably bitter enemy as long as I think there 
is cause for enmity, a very pertinaceous friend 
when I do like. From this place we go to 
London, or rather to Brompton, Mrs. James's 
sister who is in town for the winter, having 
lent her her house there, for a short time. It 
is called the Hermitage and is nearly opposite 
Trevor Square, which perhaps you may know. 
Do not suffer yourself or Mrs. Watts to fancy 
that it will put us to any inconvenience to 
receive you here if you can manage it, as I 
assure you it will not. I sell all my horses by 
auction on the 25th and you could help to 
build them up. After we quit the Hermitage, 
we have not the slightest idea where we shall 
go but there at least I trust to see you if you 
cannot leave your weighty employments ere 
then. I was delighted with your parthian 
shots, which were exquisitely truly aimed and 

211 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

though the arrows were not poisoned by your 
hand, the corruption of the flesh in which 
they have stuck, depend upon it, will produce 
gangrene. You were made for a reviewer: 
only you are honest. How was it else that I 
escaped even when we did not fully under- 
stand each other? 

I have told the booksellers to send you a 
little pamphlet on the American Boundary 
question. It is merely a brief and unpretend- 
ing summary of the early history of that bone 
of contention, only worth your looking into 
as a saving of time. 

Pray let me hear from you a few words and 
believe me with Mrs. James's and my own 
best Compliments to Mrs. Watts, 
Yours ever, 

G. P. R. James. 

P. S.-I am making a little collection of my 
works in their new edition for Mrs. Watts's 
book-case and I send Richelieu with this. It is 
odd Bulwer should have just published a play 
under the same title when the third edition of 
mine had been announced for months. I have 
not seen his, but I should like to compare the 
two. 

Alaric A. Watts, Esqre 

Crane Court, Fleet Street. 

212 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

2 Verulam Place Hastings 
I oth January 1840 
My Dear Alan: 

It is very grievous to me to hear that you 
have been suffering and it would be as griev- 
ous to hear the how if I were not quite sure 
that at your age and with temperance in all 
things such as yours, the enemy— if so we can 
venture to call him— will pass away and leave 
you, perhaps more useful, but not less com- 
fortable for many a long year. Within my 
own recollection this has happened to many 
that I still know in health and vigor but while 
any vestige remains of the disease it always 
leaves a despondency as its footprint which 
makes us look upon the attack as worse than 
it really has been. Though a successful man, 
I know— I am sure,— you have been an anxious 
man; and there is nothing has so great a tend- 
ency to produce all kinds of nervous affections 
as anxiety. I trust however that you have now 
no cause for any kind of anxiety but that re- 
garding your health, and that it will soon 
regain its tone. Pray my good friend take ex- 
ercise, not of a violent or fatiguing nature, but 
frequent and tranquilly, and remember that 
anything which hurries the circulation is very 
detrimental. You will also find everything 

213 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD IAMBS 

that sits heavy or cold upon the stomach also 
bad for you; I know, for I have seen much 
mischief done by even a small quantity of the 
cold sorts of fruit. It gives me great pleasure 
to hear you like my books. You are one of 
those who can understand and appreciate the 
plan which I have laid down for myself in 
writing them. If I chose to hazard thoughts 
and speculations that might do evil, to run a 
tilt at virtue and honor, to sport with good 
feelings and to arouse bad ones, the field be- 
ing far wider, the materials more ample, I 
might perhaps be more brilliant and witty, 
but I would rather build a greek temple or a 
gothic church than the palace of Versailles 
with all its frog's statues and marbles. If the 
books give you entertainment, you are soon 
likely to have another for there is one now in 
the press called the ^^King^s Highway^ ^ but 
which is not quite so Jack Sheppardish as the 
name implies. With our best regards to all 
yours believe me ever 

Yours truly, 

G. P. R. James. 
Allan Cunningham, Esqre 

Belgrave Place, 

Pimlico. 



214 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

I do not know to whom this letter was 
written: 

Hotel de U Europe, Brussels, 
30th July, '40. 
My Dear Sir: 

The grief and anxiety I have suffered have 
brought upon me an intermittent fever and 
various concomitant evils amongst which has 
been an affection of the face and eyes. Had 
this not been the case I should have written 
to you ere I left England, although it has cost 
me a great effort to write to any one. I am 
now a good deal better and will immediately 
correct the proofs I have received; but for the 
future will you tell Mr. Shaw to send the 
proofs in as large a mass as possible, ad- 
dressed as follows and given in to the French 
diligence office, a Monsieur G. P. James chez 
M: C. A. Fries, Heidelberg en Basle, aux soins 
de Messrs. Eschenauer Cie, Strasburg, Via 
Paris, Presse, 

This is a somewhat long address, but if it be 
not followed and the proofs be sent by Rot- 
terdam I shall never get one half of them till 
two or three years after, for such was the case 
with many proofs of Edwd, the ^lack Prince, 

Any letter for me you had better direct at 
once to me ^aux soins de Sir G. Hamilton Sey- 

215 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

mour, G. C. H. Brussels." When I am a little 
better I will write you a longer letter telling 
you all our movements and also what progress 
I have made in my plan for stopping conti- 
nental piracy; in which if you will give me 
your assistance and influence I do not despair 
of succeeding although the Government will 
do nothing. I have already made some way 
for I can talk without using my eyes. 
Yours ever faithfully, 

G. P. R. James. 

This letter was written to McGlashan, in 
Lever's care, at Brussels: 

The Shrubbery, Walmer, 
2nd August, '41. 
My Dear Sir: 

I did not write to you as I had full occupa- 
tion for every minute and of a kind that could 
not be neglected. The same will be the case 
for the next three weeks, as I am just conclud- 
ing a new work which I can of course lay 
aside for no other undertaking till it is finished. 
It will give me very great pleasure to see you 
here on our way back from Brussels and we 
can talk over the whole of my plan but as to 
having even one number completed that is 

216 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

quite out of the question as in order to accom- 
plish it I should be obliged to lay aside a work 
which had reached the beginning of the last 
volume before you made up your mind and 
to do so would be highly disadvantageous to 
both books. I can tell you quite sufficient 
however regarding the first two numbers to 
answer your views as to illustrations. 

Pray give my best wishes to Dr. Lever and 
tell him that we are all going on well; though 
for the last fortnight I have had no small anx- 
iety upon my shoulders regarding Mrs. James 
and the baby. 

Believe me to be 
Dear Sir 

Yours faithfully 

G. P. R. James. 

On May 17, 1842, he wrote to Mr. Bretton: 

* * * * I am very glad you were pleased 
with what I said at the Literary Fund dinner. 
I could have said a great deal more upon the 
same subject and opened my views for the 
benefit of the arts in this country, including 
literature of course, as one of the noblest 
branches of art-but the hour was so late that 
I made my speech as short as possible and yet 

217 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD IAMBS 

perhaps it was too long. * * * i think if I 
can bring the great body of literary men to 
act with me, especially the much neglected 
and highly deserving writers for the daily and 
weekly press, I shall be enabled to open a 
new prospect for literature. Should you have 
any oportunity [j/c] of hinting that such are 
my wishes and hopes, pray do: for this is no 
transient idea, but a fixed and long meditated 
purpose which, however inadequate may be 
my own powers to carry it out, may produce 
great things by the aid of more powerful 
minds than that of 

Yours very faithfully, 

G. P. R. James. 

The name of the person to whom the fol- 
lowing letter was written is not given: 

The Oaks nr. Walmer, Kent, 
22nd Augt., 1844. 
Sir: 

I have been either absent from home or un- 
well since your letter arrived or I should have 
answered it sooner. I do not exactly under- 
stand the sort of use you desire to make of the 
Life of Edward the ^lack Prince written by 
myself. Of course I can have no possible 

218 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

objection to your making as long quotations 
from it as you like, or to your grounding your 
own statements upon those which it contains 
which I think you may rely upon with full 
confidence; but if it was your purpose to make 
the projected Work a mere sort of Abridge- 
ment of mine, I am sorry to say I cannot give 
you the permission you desire, however much 
I might personally wish to do so, as Messrs. 
Longman published a Second Edition of it not 
long ago, a part of which remains unsold and 
I could not venture, of course to interfere with 
their sale. They could not of course object to 
any quotations you might think fit to make or 
any reasonable use of the facts stated, as I 
cannot but think that each historian has a full 
right to employ the information collected by 
all his predecessors. 

I have the honor to be. 
Sir 
Your most obedt. Servant, 

G. P. R. James, 

The Shrubbery, Walmer, Kent, 
ist June, 1847. 
My Dear Worthington. 

I received your letter yesterday and would 
have answered it immediately; but we are in 

219 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

the midst of an election business here. I am 
not a candidate; and, disgusted with public 
men, had resolved not to take any part on be- 
half of others; but I have been led on and 
when once in the business go on, as you 
know, heart and hand. 

Let me hear a little more about the Ecclesi- 
astical History Society. I am a churchman you 
know, but far from Puseyitical and I should 
not like to be mixed up with any legends ex- 
cept such as Ehrenstein or any Saints except 
St. Mary le bonne. 

I am glad to hear that you have moved your 
dwelling; for Pancras was so completely out 
of my beat that it was impossible for me to 
get there when in town. Indeed during my 
visits to that famed city of London I always 
put myself in mind of an American orator s 
description of himself when he said "I am a 
right down regler Steam Engine, I go slick off 
right ahead and never stop till I get to the 
tarnation back of nothing at all." 

I shall be delighted to see you and Mr. 
Christmas here any time you can come and 
will with a great deal of pleasure board and 
educate you but as to lodging you I am unable 
for what with babies, nurses, and one thing 
or another I can hardly lodge myself. I do 

220 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

not propose to be in London for some days 
or I should rather say weeks, as I was there 
very lately. 

As to Marylebone, any body may propose 
me for any where and I will be the represent- 
ative of any body of men always provided 
nevertheless that I do not spend a penny and 
maintain my own principles to the end of 
the chapter. I am not yet inscribable in the 
dictionaire des Girouettes; but I trust soon to 
be for it seems to me that the Jim Crow sys- 
tem is the only one that succeeds in England. 

Believe me with best regards to all your 

household 

Yours truly, 

G. P. R. James. 

In a letter dated April i, 1849, and ad- 
dressed to Mr. Davison, he says: 

"I understand you have got a potato. Can 
you spare half of it, for we have not that. But 
to speak seriously, which is not my wont, Mrs. 
James has heard from Mrs. H. that on your 
farm there are some capital praties, and as we 
have been languishing for some of the jewels 
for the last month without being able to get 
anything edible or digestible, if this rumor of 
your riches is correct, will you spare a sack or 

221 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

two to a poor man in want, and what will be 
the cost of the same, delivered in Farnham 
safe, sound and in good condition —wind and 
weather permitting. The truth is I have no 
horse to send for them; and neither cow nor 
calf have learned to draw yet. I have had no 
time to teach them, or to buy a horse either. 
I wish any one else had half my work and I 
half of theirs-'Fd take it and give a premium." 

How busy he was after his arrival in Amer- 
ica may be seen from a letter dated October 
27, 1850: 

"I fear that it would be quite impossible for 
me to rewrite the first four numbers of the 
tale you speak of. Applications for lectures 
have come in so rapidly that I have not one 
single evening vacant and the evening would 
be the only time which I could devote to such 
a purpose as all my mornings must be given 
up to the fulfilment of my engagements with 
England and to traveling from place to place. 
You may easily imagine how much I am occu- 
pied when I tell you that during the whole 
month I am about to stay in Boston, there is 
not one night which has not its lecture fixed 
there or at some place in the neighborhood. 
The delay in London however, of which I 

222 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

had not heard till I received your letters is 
favorable, as it will enable me to get the 
proofs over in good time. The four parts are 
in type, I understand, and I have written over 
two thumping letters to the printers scolding 
them for not sending the proof as they are 
bound by contract to do. One of these letters 
was posted three weeks ago, so that we may 
expect the proofs in a week or ten days. In 
regard to the name, it is certainly curious that 
no name should have been taken three times 
but I do not see how it is possible for me to 
aher it now when it is announced in London 
I was not at all aware that any work had be-- 
fore appeared under a similar title, but you 
could head it Jameses story without a name in 
the Magazine, but if any other title is given it 
must be by yourselves and not by 
Yours faithfully, 

G. P. R. James." 

Soon after his arrival in America he appears 
to have become involved in some trouble with 
publishers. He writes from New York on 
October, 24, 1850, to Oilier: 

* * * "Send no more sheets to Mr. Law 
till you hear from me again. My eyes have 
been opened since my arrival here. Four 

223 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

times the sum now paid can be obtained from 
Messrs. Harper, and negotiations are going on 
with them in which they must not have the 
advantage of having the sheets. You shall 
not lose by any new arrangement<-of that you 
may trust to the word of one who has I think 
never failed you." 

He adds, in a postscript: "Tell him [Mr. 
Newby] I have been shamefully imposed 
upon by false statements of the sale here and 
if I had taken his advice I should have been 
some hundreds of pounds richer." 

On October 5, 1851, he writes from Stock- 
bridge to OUier: 

"I have not written to you earlier because I 
wanted to find the treaty with Russia in 
regard to Copyright, and also to see the head 
of a great German house here in America so 
as to put you in the way of negociating for 
the sale of my next book in Germany. But I 
have been too lame to leave my own house 
for anything but a morning's drive. I am so 
far better that I can now walk out for a mile 
or two, but my right hand and arm remain 
very painful. However, I think I shall be able 
to go to New York in ten days and will write 
to you from that place. * * * I am anxious 

224 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

to dedicate the first book I write to my own 
satisfaction, to Lord Charles Clinton. He is 
one of the noblest-minded men I ever met 
with-all truth and honor and straightfor- 
wardness. If you see him will you ask him 
for me whether he has any objection. The 
Fate is highly popular here-considered the 
best book I ever wrote—by the critics at least. 
The whole of the first chapter was read in 
the Supreme Court the other day before Chief 
Justice Shaw to prove what was the state of 
England in the reign of James II. So says the 
*N. Y. Evening Post' and I suppose it is true. 
I wish I had you here with me to see the 
splendor of an American autumn in this most 
lovely scene. The landscape is all on fire with 
the coloring of the foliage and yet so harmo- 
niously blended are the tints, from the bright- 
est crimson to the deep green of the pines 
that the effect is that of a continuous sunset. 
Mountains, forests, lakes, streams are all in a 
glow round." 

A letter to Oilier, written at Stockbridge on 
March 22, 1852, deals with some financial 
matters and then proceeds: 

"I am glad to hear what you say of Revenge 
—though the title is not one I would myself 

225 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

have chosen, there being a tale of that name 
in the book of the Passions. I think it is a 
good book, better in conception than in exe- 
cution perhaps. Your comparison of Richard- 
son and Johnson with myself and you will 
not hold. You are scantily remunerated for 
much trouble. Johnson had done nothing that 
I can remember for Richardson. As to Rich- 
ardson's parsimony towards the great, good 
man, you explain it all in one word. The 
former was rich. Do you remember the fine 
poem of Gaffer Grey-Holcrofft's I believe— 

*The poor man alone. 
To the poor man's moan. 
Of his morsel a morsel will give 
Gaffer Grey.' 

"But this rule is not without splendid ex- 
ceptions, of which I will one day give you an 
instance, which I think will touch you much. 
At present I am writing in great haste in the 
grey of the morning with snow all around me, 
the thermometer at i8, and my hand nearly 
frozen. Verily, we have here to pay for the 
hot summer and gorgeous autumn in the cold 
silver coinage of winter." 

Another letter of his written from Win- 

226 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

Chester, Virginia, November 6, 1853, to 
Oilier, has some interest. He writes thus: 

"My Dear Oilier: Long before the arrival 
of your kind letter, which reached me only 
two days ago, I had directed Messrs. Harper 
to send me a revise of the first page of 
Ticonderoga^ in order to transmit it to you for 
the correction of errors which had crept into 
the Ms. through the stupidity of the drunken 
beast who wrote it under my dictation. Har- 
pers have never sent the revise, but I think it 
better to write at once in order to have one 
correction and one alteration made, which 
must be effected even at the cost of a cancel 
of the page-which of course I will pay for. 
The very first sentence should have inverted 
commas before it. These have been omitted 
in the copy left here, as well as the words 'so 
he wrote' or something tantamount, inserted 
at the end of the first clause of that sentence. 
* * * I cannot feel that an appointment of 
any small value, to the dearest and most un- 
healthy city in the United States (with the 
exception of New Orleans) is altogether what 
I had a right to hope for or expect. You must 
recollect that I never asked for the consulate 
of Virginia, where there is neither society for 

227 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

my family, resources or companionship for 
myself, nor education to be procured for my 
little boy'-where I am surrounded by swamps 
and marsh miasma, eaten up by mosquitoes 
and black flies, and baked under an atmos- 
phere of molten brass, with the thermometer 
in the shade at 103 -where every article of 
first necessity, with the exception of meat, is 
sixty per cent, dearer than in London— where 
the only literature is the ledger, and the arts 
only illustrated in the slave market. 

"I hesitated for weeks ere I accepted; and 
only did so at length upon the assurances 
given that this was to be a step to something 
better, and upon the conviction that I was 
killing myself by excessive literary labors. 
Forgive me for speaking somewhat bitterly; 
but I feel I have not been well used. You 
have known me more than thirty years, and 
during that time I do not think you ever be- 
fore heard a complaint issue from my lips. I 
am not a habitual grumbler; but *the galled 
jade will wince.' 

**! am very grateful to Scott for his kind 
efforts, and perhaps they may be successful; 
for Lord Clarendon, who is I believe a perfect 
gentleman himself, when he comes to consider 
the society in which I have been accustomed 

228 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD )AMES 

to move, my character, my habits of thought, 
and the sort of place which Norfolk is— if he 
knows anything about it^-must see that I am 
not in my proper position there. He has no 
cause of enmity or ill-will towards me, and 
my worst enemy could not wish me a more 
unpleasant position. If I thought that I was 
serving my country there better than I could 
elsewhere, I would remain without asking for 
a change; but the exact reverse is the case. 
The slave dealers have got up a sort of outcry 
against me—I believe because under Lord 
Clarendon s own orders I have successfully 
prosecuted several cases of kidnapping ne- 
groes from the West Indies— and the conse- 
quence is that not a fortnight passes but an 
attempt is made to burn my house down. The 
respectable inhabitants of Norfolk are indig- 
nant at this treatment of a stranger, and the 
authorities have offered a reward of three 
hundred dollars for the apprehension of the 
offenders; but nothing has proved successful. 
This outcry is altogether unjust and unreason- 
able; for I have been perfectly silent upon the 
question of slavery since I have been here, 
judging that I had no business to meddle with 
the institutions of a foreign country in any 
way. But I will not suffer any men, when I 

229 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

can prevent or punish it» to reduce to slavery 
British subjects without chastisement. 

"You will be sorry to hear that this last year 
in Norfolk has been very injurious to my 
health; and I am just now recovering from a 
sharp attack of the fever and ague peculiar 
to this climate. It seized me just as I set out 
for the West-the great, the extraordinary 
West. Quinine had no effect upon it, but I 
learned a remedy in Wisconsin which has 
cured the disease entirely, though I am still 
very weak. * * * " 

He seems to have been tormented by ill 
health during all his period of residence at 
Norfolk. He writes to Oilier: 

"British Consulate, Norfolk, Virginia, ) 
7th April, 1855. S 

My Dear Oilier: 

It has been impossible for me to write to 
you and it is now only possible for me to 
write a few lines as I have already had to do 
more than my tormented and feeble hands 
could well accomplish. For 10 weeks I was 
nailed to my chair with rheumatic gout in 
knees, feet, hips, hands, shoulder. For some 
time I could only sign my dispatches with my 

230 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

left hand and to some letters put my mark 
Happily my feet, knees, &c., are well, but I 
cannot get the enemy out of my hands and 
arms. My shoulder is Sebastopol and will 
not yield." 

Another letter, also in my possession, I have 
caused to be printed elsewhere. It is ad- 
dressed to Oilier, and was written from Farn- 
ham, Surrey, on July 26, 1848. 

"My Dear Oilier: I do not suppose that I 
shall be in town for a few days, and I think in 
the meantime it would be better to send me 
down the sheets with any observations you 
may have to make. I shall be very happy to 
cut, carve, alter and amend to the best of my 
ability. The *sum' can only be described as 
*Heaven, Hell and Earth,' or if you like it 
better, 'upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's 
chamber." But I suppose neither of these de- 
scriptions would be very attractive and there- 
fore perhaps you had better put 'The Sky, the 
hall of Eblis, South Asia.' When it maketh its 
appearance you had better for your own sake 
take care of the reviewing; for I cannot help 
thinking that with the critics at least, my name 
attached to it is likely to do it more harm than 

231 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

good, unless friendly hands undertake the 

reviewing. The literary world always puts 

me in mind of the account which naturalists 

give of the birds called Puffs and Rees which 

alight in great bodies upon high downs and 

then each bird forms a little circle in which 

he runs round and round. As long as each 

continues this healthful exercise on the spot 

he has first chosen, all goes on quietly; but 

the moment any one ventures out of his own 

circle, all the rest fall upon him and very often 

a general battle ensues. I wish you could do 

anything for my book Gowrie or the King^s 

Plot. I had a good deal of money embarked 

in it. 

Yours faithfully, 

G. P. R. James." 

My letter of latest date indicates the time 
when he was transferred to Richmond. 

British Consulate, Norfolk, Va. 
3 May, 1856. 
My Dear Mr. Kennedy: 

* * * Lord Clarendon has ordered me to 
make every preparation for moving the Con- 
sulate of Virginia up to Richmond but not to 
do so until he has nominated a Vice Consul 

232 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

for Norfolk. He also wishes me to send him 
a detailed report regarding the late epidemic 
here and what between house hunting, office 
hunting, and trying to run down those foxes 
called rumors into their holes and to draw 
truth up from the bottom of her well in a 
place where people are as fanatical upon con- 
tagion and non-contagion as if they were arti- 
cles of faith, I have had no peace of my life. 
My book I would have sent you but I could 
not get a copy worth sending. It has found 
favor in the South and is powerfully abused 
in the North, both which circumstances tend 
to increase the sale so that it has been won- 
derfully well read. * * * I am sorry I did 
not think of taking notes of all the winning 
conversations at Berkely. We might have 
made out together some few from the Noctes 
Berkelianae. 

Yours ever, 

G. P. R. James. 

VII. 
I was interested not long ago in a remark of 
the accomplished literary reviewer of the 
Providence Journal about reading for boys. 
He said: "As a matter of fact, there is plenty 
of good, healthy reading for boys if parents 
- 233 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

and teachers would do more to bring it to 
their attention. To say nothing of Scott— 
whom some degenerate youngsters in these 
days profess to find stupid-there are Ains- 
worth. G. P. R. James, Mayne Reid and hosts 
of others who can tell stories of adventure 
that any healthy minded boy will enjoy." I 
know well the sound and refined judgments 
of my Providence friend,— who castigated me 
once for my opinion that Cowper was not 
much read in these times-but I do not under- 
stand how he can imagine a boy of the 
twentieth century condescending to read 
Ainsworth or James. First and foremost, the 
novels are too long. The conventional three 
volumes demanded by the English public are 
revolting to the minds of the modern boys 
who want their fiction condensed and fla- 
vored with tabasco sauce. The Providence 
critic and I know— or think we know— what 
they ought to read, what would be good for 
their intellectual digestion; but we might as 
well offer them pre-digested tablets in lieu of 
chocolate creams. The young person will not 
now subsist on a diet of Ainsworth or of 
James. The long-spun dialogue would bore 
him. He calls for something more piquant; 
revels in slang; wants "sensation" and plenty 

234 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

of it, compressed in a small compass. As for 
the parents, they do not know much better 
themselves. The man of Providence well 
says: "The trouble is, as was pointed out in 
these columns recently in discussing the read- 
ing of girls, that the home atmosphere is all 
against any intelligent selection of books." 
The prevalent antagonism to all that is called 
"old-fashioned" is not limited to the young 
people, and the novels of James are, in com- 
parison with the novels of to-day as old-fash- 
ioned as are the plays of Massinger in com- 
parison with those of Bernard Shaw. 

James has been compared to Dumas, and 
there are many things in common between 
the two authors^their voluminous publica- 
tions, their bent towards the historical, and 
their use of an amanuensis. A critic, not very 
well disposed towards James, says in regard 
to this comparison: "Both had a certain gift 
of separating from the picturesque parts of 
history what could without difficulty be 
worked up into picturesque fiction, and both 
were possessed of a ready pen. Here, how- 
ever, the likeness ends. Of purely literary 
talent, James had little. His plots are poor, his 
descriptions weak, his dialogue often below 
even a fair average, and he was deplorably 

235 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES 

prone to repeat himself." ^ This harsh judg- 
ment appears to me to be far too severe. His 
descriptions are not weak, and he surely had 
an advantage over Dumas in the matter of 
decency and morality. 

But the most ardent admirers of this hard- 
working and conscientious toiler in the fields 
of literature must own that in all his multitu- 
dinous pages he has not given to the world a 
single character which has endured in the 
popular mind, and the Podsnap virtue of hav- 
ing written no word which could bring a blush 
to the cheek of the young person, cannot 
remedy this flaw in his title. Writers who rival 
him in productiveness but who are in many 
respects inferior to him, have nevertheless 
secured a more permanent place in the hall of 
fame, because they have been able to give to 
some of their personages a real and distinctive 
life. Leather-Stocking and Long Tom Coffin 
shine forth from the many wearisome chapters 
of Fenimore Cooper, Count Fosco and Captain 
Wragge from the ephemeral volumes of Wil- 
kie Collins, and Mrs. Proudie from the placid 
chronicles of Anthony Trollope, but they have 
no kinsmen in the works of James. Even in the 

1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, XIII. 561 (Ninth Edition). 

236 



GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD lAMES 

historical stories no individual stands forth like 
Louis XL in Quentin Durward or Rienzi in 
Bulwer's stirring tale. Nor has he left to pos- 
terity any brilliant tour de force like the "Jack 
Sheppard's Ride" of Harrison Ainsworth. 

Whatever may be said of the diffuseness 
and sameness of the stories, of their want of 
definite plan, their lack of strength in the 
development of the characters who throng 
their pages, and the evidence they afford of 
hasty composition, it must be admitted that 
they are clean and dignified in tone and that 
they display a wonderful acquaintance with 
history as well as a faithful and conscientious 
use of the materials gathered with infinite 
pains and laborious research. These qualities, 
however, are not those which ensure literary 
immortality; and while it is possible that the 
best of the books may find from time to time 
readers incited to peruse them by a certain 
curiosity, and while the lovers of good stories 
may enjoy them, it is not likely that they will 
ever rank with the novels of Scott, of Thack- 
eray, of Dickens, or even of Marryat and 
Lever, although they may occupy a place on 
the shelves of our libraries by the side of the 
old romances of the period of Amadis de Gaul 
or the forgotten tales of the younger Crebillon. 

237 



A LIST OF THE WORKS OF 
G. P. R. JAMES. 

It is difficult to give an accurate list of 
James's books with the dates of their publi- 
cation. The one given by Allibone is the 
most complete, but it is not always correct 
The catalogue of the British Museum enumer- 
ates sixty-seven novels. The following does 
not include merely edited works or those pre- 
pared in collaboration with others, with a few 
exceptions. Those marked with an asterisk 
are reprinted in the collected edition of 1844- 
1849. I have been much helped not only in 
correcting the Allibone list, but in the prepar- 
ation of the sketch of James, by Mr. G. H. Sass 
of Charleston, S. C, who is probably better 
informed about the subject than any one else 
in this country. 

Life of Edward the Black Prince: 2 vols.: 
1822. [Some accounts give 1836. See ante^ 
page 204.] 

The Ruined City: a poem. 

Richelieu: 3 vols.: 1829. 

*Darnley: 3 vols.: 1830. 

*DerOrme: 3 vols.: 1830. 

239 



LIST OF THE WORKS OF G. P. R. JAMES 

* Philip Augustus: 3 vols.: 1831. 
Memoirs of Great Commanders: 3 vols.: 

1832. 

* Henry Masterton: 3 vols.: 1832. 
History of Charlemagne: 1832. 
*Mary of Burgundy: 3 vols.: 1833. 

* Delaware: 3 vols.: 1833: (reprinted under 
title of "Thirty Years Since," 1848.) 

*John Marston Hall: 3 vols.: 1834: (re- 
printed under title of "The Little Ball o' Fire,*^ 

1847.) 

*One in a Thousand: 3 vols.: 1835. 

*The Gipsey: 3 vols.: 1835. 

Educational Institutions of Germany: 1836. 

Lives of the Most Eminent Foreign States- 
men: 5 vols.: (4 by James, i836,[i832?] 1838.) 

Attila: 3 vols.: 1837. 

Memoirs of Celebrated Women: 3 vols. (?) 

1837. 
*The Robber: 3 vols.: 1838. 
Book of the Passions: 1838. 
History of Louis XIV. 4 vols.: 1838. 
*The Huguenot: 3 vols.: 1838. 
Blanche of Navarre: a play: 1839. 
Charles Tyrrell: 2 vols.: 1839. 

* The Gentlemen of the Old School : 3 vols. : 

1839- 
*Henry of Guise: 3 vols.: 1839. 

240 



LIST OF THE WORKS OF G. P. R. JAMES 

History of the United States Boundary 
Question: 1839. 

*The King's Highway: 3 vols.: 1840. 

The Man at Arms : 3 vols. : 1 840. 

Rose d'Albret: 3 vols.: 1840. 

The Jacquerie: 3 vols.: 1841. 

The Vernon Letters: 3 vols.: (edited) 1841. 

*Castleneau; or the Ancient Regime: 3 
vols.: 1841. 

*TheBrigand;orCorsedeLeon:3Vols.:i84i. 

Corn Laws. 

History of Richard Coeur de Lion: 4 vols.: 
i84i'-42. 

Commissioner; or De Lunatico Inquirendo: 
1842. 

* Morley Ernstein : 3 vols.: 1842. 

Eva St. Clair, and Other Tales: 2vols.: 1843. 

The False Heir: 3 vols.: 1843. 

*ForestDays: 3 vols.: 1843. 

History of Chivalry: 1843. 

* Arabella Stuart: 3 vols.: 1843. 

*Agincourt: 3 vols.: 1844. 

ArrahNeil: 3 vols.: 1845. 

The Smuggler: 3 vols.: 1845. 

Heidelberg: 3 vols.: 1846. 

The Stepmother: 3 vols.: 1846. 

Whim and its Consequences: 3 vols.: 1847. 

Margaret Graham: 2 vols.: 1847. 

241 



LIST OF THE WORKS OF G. P. R. JAMES 

The Last of the Fairies: 1847. 

The Castle of Ehrenstein: 3 vols.: 1847. 

The Woodman: 3 vols.: 1847. 

The Convict: 3 vols.: 1847. 

Life of Henry IV. of France: 3 vols.: 1847. 

Russell: 3 vols.: 1847. 

Sir Theodore Broughton: 3 vols.: 1847. 

Beauchamp: 3 vols.: 1848. 

Carmazalaman; a Fairy Drama: 1848. 

The Fight of the Fiddlers: 1848. 

Forgery; or Best Intentions: 3 vols.: 1848. 

* Cowrie; or the King's Plot: 1848. 

Dark Scenes of History: 3 vols.: 1849. 

John Jones' Tales from English History: 2 
vols.: 1849. 

A String of Pearls: % vols.: 1849. [His first 
written book; published 1839 (?); AUibone 
assigns its publication to 1849]. 

Ireland's "David Rizzio": 1849: (edited.) 

Heathfield s "Means of Relief from Tax- 
ation": 1849: (edited.) 

Henry Smeaton: 3 vols.: 1850. 

The Fate: 3 vols.: 1851. 

Revenge: (sometimes called A Story With- 
out a Name) 3 vols.: 1851. 

Pequinillo: 3 vols.: 1852. 

Adrian; or the Clouds of the Mind: (jointly 
with M. B. Field) 2 vols.: 1852. 

242 



LIST OF THE WORKS OF G, P. R. JAMES 

Agnes Sorel: 3 vols.: 1853. 
Ticonderoga; or the Black Eagle: 3 vols.: 

1854. 
Prince Life: 1855. 

The Old Dominion; or the Southampton 
Massacre: 3 vols.: 1856. 

Lord Montagus Page: 1858. 

The Cavalier: (Bernard March?) 1859. 

Adra: or the Peruvians: a poem: ( circa y 
1829.) 

The City of the Silent: a poem. 

The Desultory Man: 3 vols. 

Life of Vicissitudes. 

My Aunt Pontypool: 3 vols. 

The Old Oak Chest: 3 vols. 



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